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THROTTLED 




Inspector Thomas J. Tunney 



THROTTLED! 

THE DETECTION OF THE GERMAN 
AND ANARCHIST BOMB PLOTTERS 



BY 

INSPECTOR THOMAS J. TUNNEY 

Head of the Bomb Squad of the New York 
Police Department 

AS TOLD TO 

PAUL MERRICK HOLLISTER 

Author, with John Price Jones, of "The German 
Secret Service in America" 



ILLUSTRATED 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 




BOSTON 
SMALLL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 



^ 



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I 



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Copyright, 1919 

By small, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
(incorporated) 



AUG i8;3ra 






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'^'•A530552 



TO 
ARTHUR WOODS 
Formerly Police Commissioner of the 
City of New York, now colonel in the 
United States Army, whose vision and 
cooperation made the work of the 
Bomb Squad possible, this volume is 
respectfully dedicated 



INTRODUCTION 

Inspector Tunney's Squad was formed early In 
August, 19 14, to specialize in organized crimes of 
violence. It did some radically effective work 
against Black Handers, and handled several cases 
against domestic enemies of law and order, but as 
time wore on and war developed, the Squad's 
energies became directed solely against the ne- 
farious activities of Germans among us. 

Inspector Tunney is a most skilful detective, re- 
sourceful, persistent, understanding human nature, 
a good leader. He picked a squad of fearless, 
tireless men, who not only worked long and hard, 
but showed marked skill and tact. They proved 
themselves to be Americans all the way through, 
aggressive, loyal, bound to put the job through, no 
matter what the difficulties might be. They were 
occupied In hunting out Germans who were out- 
raging our neutrality; and then — after we finally 
started to make war against those who had so long 
been warring against us, on the high seas and in 
our very midst — they set to work to thwart and 
capture active German enemies. The results they 



viii INTRODUCTION 

got went far toward making it possible to maintain 
order in New York during those months and years 
which were full of such menace to the safety of 
the city, when the national danger seemed so plain 
— so increasingly plain — and the national mili- 
tary strength was so woefully weak. In many 
cases the Inspector worked in cooperation with one 
or more of the Federal Secret Service forces. The 
Federal work was seriously hampered, however, 
at first by hopelessly inadequate organization, and, 
later, by the existence of several entirely distinct 
forces, instead of one powerful, unified body. 

Inspector Tunney has written a most interesting 
book. Much of what he tells I knew about at the 
time, from conference with him, or with Major 
Scull, Colonel Biddle, or Major Potter, and some 
of the events described I had intimate knowledge 
of because of personal attention to the cases. 
Some, however, I personally know nothing about, 
as they have taken place since I left the Depart- 
ment on January i, 191 8. And a vast amount of 
good work, of real public service, was done by In- 
spector Tunney and his men that is not touched 
upon in this book, that probably will never be writ- 
ten, , since, though of great value to the public 
peace, it lacks some of the dramatic features which 
characterize the tales that are told. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

No one can read the book without seeing how 
brutally active our enemies were here in this coun- 
try, even while we were at peace with them, how 
they flouted our neutrality brazenly and con- 
temptuously, how they busied themselves through 
their accredited officials and their many secret 
agents in trying to paralyze our industrial life. 
Their deliberate effort was to prevent the ship- 
ment of all vital supplies to the Allies, and they 
sought this end by fomenting labor troubles, by 
burning factories, by blowing up ships. It mat- 
tered not the slightest to them that in this kind of 
activity they destroyed the property of a people at 
peace with them, nor did they give a deterring 
thought to the fact that they were maiming and 
killing human beings with their burnings and blast- 
ings. It did concern them, however, to keep 
things dark, to work under cover, so that they 
might continue this underhanded war against us 
without being found out. It was the warfare of 
the savage, who knows not fair play, who is guided 
by no rules or customs, who strikes down his enemy 
In the dark, from behind. 

The lessons to America are clear as day. We 
must not again be caught napping with no adequate 
national Intelligence organization. The several 
Federal bureaus should be welded into one, and 



X INTRODUCTION 

that one should be eternally and comprehensively 
vigilant. We must be wary of strange doctrine, 
steady in judgment, instinctively repelling those 
v/ho seek to poison public opinion. And our laws 
should be amended so that while they give free 
scope to Americans for untrammeled expression 
of differences of opinion and theory and belief, 
they forbid and prevent the enemy plotter and 
propagandist. 

There was another part of the Squad's work, 
which had to do not with foreign, but Vv^Ith domes- 
tic, enemies. The industrial condition of unem- 
ployment, which v/as so sharp In 19 14 and 19 15, 
was exploited by those who believed in propaganda 
by violence, hoping to find eager and bitter listen- 
ers In the thousands who could not get work. To 
ameliorate the hardships of the situation the police 
in New York tried several plans which were at 
that time rather new as police methods. They 
found jobs for people; they afforded relief in cases 
of distress from funds, more than half of which 
were subscribed by pohcemen. When street meet- 
ings were held and excitement ran high, they held 
unswervingly to the line of conduct mapped out 
for them. They not merely permitted free as- 
semblage but protected meetings so long as they 
kept the laws ; and the law was kept if the meeting 



INTRODUCTION » 

did not incite to violence or obstruct the highways. 
In case of threatened violence, action, prompt and 
strong, was taken to prevent it. Order must be 
maintained. Inspector Tunney's Squad were ac- 
tively engaged here, not in trying to bottle up the 
preachers of any particular doctrine, but simply in 
finding out who were the plotters of violent deeds 
and bringing them to justice. 

I believe the police methods in these times were 
wholesome and effective, and are the right ones to 
follow in times of public excitement and industrial 
disturbances. They make it clear in practice that 
leeway will be given to all for the full exercise of 
their lawful rights; and equally clear that adequate 
means will be taken to prevent recourse to unlaw- 
ful measures. In many places in this country 
where serious disorder and bloodshed have come 
to pass, the trouble seems to have been fostered, at 
least, by the denial to groups of people of some of 
their lawful rights. 

I hope this book will help to teach another les- 
son also: the need in our police forces of brains 
and high morale; the need of cultivating the pro- 
fessional spirit in them, that shall dignify the work, 
shall banish political influence and all other in- 
fluences that go to break the heart of the police- 
man who tries to do his plain duty; the need of 



xil INTRODUCTION 

having the public take an intelligent interest in 
police methods and results, doing away with the 
smoke-screens of mystery and concealment which 
are traditionally employed to cover dishonesty or 
Incompetency. 

Arthur Woods 
February, 19 19. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Bomb Squad . . . . ^ . . i 

8 



II Westphalian Efficiency .... 

III Playing with Fire ...... 

IV The Hindu-Boche Failures . 
V A True Pirate Tale ..... 

VI Along the Waterfront: Sugar and 
Ships and Robert Fay .... 

VII Along the Waterfront (II): ''Damn 
Him, Rintelen!" 



VIII Mr. Holt's Four Days ..... 

IX The Nature Faker ..... 

X The Prussian, the Bolshevik, and the 
Anarchist 



39 
69 

108 
126 

156 

183 
217 

246 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Inspector Thomas J. Tunney . . . Frontispiece 



PAGE 



Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Biddle, Military 

Intelligence 4 

Paul Koenig 10 

Random Pages from *T. K.'s Little Black Book" 

22, 23, 26, 27, 36, 37 

Alexander Dietrichens and Frederick Schleindl . 30 

Carmine and Carbone in Court .... 46 

Pages from the bomb-thrower's textbook . . 52 
A postcard received by Commissioner Woods after 

the arrest of the Anarchists .... 60 
Detectives in Disguise — George D. Barnitz, Pat- 
rick Walsh, James Sterett, Jerome Murphy . 64 

Threats to Polignani 66 

Frank Abamo and Carmine Carbone ... 66 
A Handbill, printed in Hindu, used by the 

Hindu-Boche Conspirators . . . .72 

The Hindu-Boche Conspirators .... 76 

The Annie Larsen's Cash Account ... 80 

Gupta's Code Message 80 

How the Hindus used Price Collier's "Germany 

and the Germans" as a cryptogram . . 90 

Alexander V. Kircheisen and his application for 
a certificate as able seaman .... 106 

XV 



xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Lieutenant George D. Bamitz, U. S. N. . 118 ^ 
Robert Fay and Lieut. George D. Barnitz . .130 

Fay, Daeche and Scholz arraigned in Court. . 130 

The Fay Bomb Materials 138 

Lieutenant Fay's Motor Boat .... 150 

Rudder Bombs 154 

Franz Rintelen 160 

Henry Barth, who posed as the German Secret 

Service Agent 164 

Ernest Becker .. . . . . . • 168 

Captain Charles von Kleist and Captain Otto 

Wolpert 168 

Sergeant Thomas Jenkins, U. S. Army, who lo- 
cated part of one' of the bombs in the German 
Turn Verein in Brooklyn . . . .174 

Norman H. White, of Boston, a civilian attached 
to the Military Intelligence, who unearthed 
numerous German intrigues . . . .180 

Mrs. Holt's Mysterious Letter .... 208 

The First Word from Texas .... 208 

Fritz Duquesne prepared for a Lecture Tour as 

Captain Claude Stoughton .... 224 

From Fritz Duquesne's Past .... 230 

Papers found in Fritz Duquesne's effects . . 236 

Lieutenant Commander Spencer Eddy . . 248 

Major Fuller Potter, Military Intelligence . . 252 

Lieutenant A. R. Fish, Naval Intelligence . . 260 

Captain John B. Trevor, Military Intelligence . 268 



THROTTLED! 



THROTTLED 



THE BOMB SQUAD 

For the past twenty-three years I have been a 
member of the police department of the City of 
New York. It is a long time, in any single job. 
The department is comparable in size to a manu- 
facturing establishment of the first magnitude — it 
employs more than ten thousand men — and its oc- 
cupations are varied enough to suit the inclina- 
tions and ambitions of any man. And so I went 
through the mill, graduating from one duty to an- 
other until in 19 14 I was an acting captain, and 
had been in charge of various branches of the De- 
tective Bureau in Brooklyn and Manhattan. 

My duty was the detection of crime, my spe- 
cialty, meaning by that the special branch of crime 
with which I had been most often thrown into con- 
tact, was bomb-explosions. As far back as 1904 
there were a number of mysterious explosions in 
New York which caused considerable propertv 



2 THROTTLED 

damage, and there I made the acquaintance of the 
bomb itself. It was an interesting subject for 
study, and a wicked weapon in use. I managed 
to pick up information of bomb-manufacture in 
several ways: Black-Handers, in prison, told me 
how they had made their missiles; at the New 
York office of the Du Pont explosives company I 
had an opportunity to study blasting; the publica- 
tions of the Bureau of Mines furnished more in- 
formation, the practice of the Bureau of Combus- 
tibles of our own department proved interesting 
and Instructive, and I found myself before long 
forced to become something of a student of chem- 
istry. 

The difference between our work and the work 
of the laboratory chemist, however, was that in 
our case there was no time to make an explosive 
mixture and test it — some criminal usually had 
done that for us, and we were called to the scene 
to find out, from such clues as the wreckage af- 
forded, the name and address of the criminal. 
The laboratory chemist mixes Ingredients and 
counts his work done at the moment of explosion; 
the detective begins at that moment a stern chase, 
and a long one, back to the Ingredients and the 
man who mixed them. 

By the early part of 1 9 1 4 1 had seen a good deal 



THE BOMB SQUAD 3 

of experience in tracing bomb outrages to certain 
of the anarchistic and Black Hand elements In the 
population of the city. As the year wore on these 
occurrences became so numerous as to warrant spe- 
cial attention, and on August i, the approximate 
date of the outbreak of war in Europe, Police 
Commissioner Arthur Woods created in the police 
department the Bomb Squad. I was in command, 
and reported direct to the Commissioner. As the 
volume of work Increased, and more men were 
taken on, the Commissioner delegated his super- 
vision of the Bomb Squad to Guy Scull, who was 
then Fifth Deputy Police Commissioner, and who 
is now a major in the United States Army. That 
supervision was later passed on to Nicholas Bid- 
die, a Special Deputy Commissioner, who, as I 
write this, is lieutenant-colonel In the United States 
Army, in charge of the Military Intelligence 
Bureau in New York; and following Mr. Biddle, 
Fuller Potter, another special Deputy Commis- 
sioner, and now a major in the Military Intel- 
ligence, directed the policies of the Squad. 

Within a few months the personnel of the Bomb 
Squad included the following picked men: 
George D. Barnltz, Amedeo Pollgnani, Henry 
Barth, George P. Gilbert, Edward Caddell, 
Patrick J. Walsh, Jerome Murphy, James J. 



4 THROTTLED 

Coy, Valentine Corell, James Sterctt, Henry 
Senff, Michael Santanlello, Joseph Fenelly, 
Joseph Kiley, Charles Wallace, William Ran- 
dolph, Thomas Jenkins, and Anthony Terra — 
all detective sergeants, and George Busby, a lieu- 
tenant. To this list were added the names of 
James Murphy, Robert Morris, Thomas J. Ford, 
Walter Culhane, Vincent E. Hastings, Thomas 
J. Cavanagh, Louis B. Snowden, Thomas M. 
Goss, Daniel F. Collins, Frederick Mazer, Ed- 
ward J. Maher, Walter Price, William Mc- 
Cahlll, and Cornelius J. Sullivan. It made a list 
of fine material for the work which we were called 
upon to do, and no one will begrudge me here a 
word of tribute to their aptitude, their courage 
— to all of the qualities which made them such 
able and vigilant guardians of the neutrality of 
our country during the years preceding our en- 
trance into the war. Many of the Bomb Squad 
went to war later: Barnltz became a junior 
lieutenant in the United States Navy, in intelli- 
gence work of a high order. Barth, Caddell, 
Corell, Fenelly, Jenkins, Walsh, Sterett, Santanl- 
ello, Randolph, James Murphy, Morris, Ford, 
Culhane, Hastings, Cavanagh, Snowden, Goss, 
Collins, Price, Mazer, Maher, McCahill and Sul- 
livan became sergeants In the Corps of Intelli- 




Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Biddle, Military Intelligence 



THE BOMB SQUAD 5 

gcncc Police of the National Army. And after 
I became connected with the Military Intelligence 
Branch of the War Department, I had frequent 
occasion to deal during the war in cooperation 
with the men whom I have mentioned in service. 

My first desire in taking charge of the Squad 
was to suppress the activities of persons using 
explosives to destroy life and property. What 
knowledge of the physics and chemistry of ex- 
plosives my experience had accumulated I passed 
on to the men. These periods of instruction went 
into considerable detail. We discussed the kinds 
of explosives used, their relative strength, their 
ingredients, the methods of detonating them, the 
containers into which they were loaded, and the 
use of clockwork, fuses, acids and gas-pressure 
to explode them. Special and explicit instruc- 
tion was given for the handling of unexploded 
bombs — a bomb bearing an electrical attach- 
ment should not be placed in water, for example, as 
water is a conductor of electricity; it is wise never 
to smoke in the presence of explosives, even if 
you think you know that certain kinds of explosives 
'' never explode by fire." The only thing you 
can depend on explosives to do one hundred times 
out of one hundred, is what you don't expect them 
to do. The Bomb Squad was told never to — • 



6 THROTTLED 

and why never to — carry bombs on passenger 
trains, cars or ferries, or anywhere near where 
metals were being shipped. The Bomb Squad 
was instructed not to remove a bomb found in a 
position where its explosion would not endanger 
life and property, but to send for an expert and 
wait until he arrived on the scene, and was told 
which positions were dangerous and which were 
not. Altogether we conducted a rather thorough 
course in explosives. 

As the war grew in proportions, and the in- 
terest of America in the conflict became more 
and more intimate, the activities of the Bomb 
Squad became somewhat diverted from the ob- 
ject for which it had been primarily organized, 
and its title was changed to the " Bomb and Neu- 
trality Squad." We had not expected in August 
that the German would try to tip over our neu- 
trality with bombs, but that is what he did, and 
that is what kept us grimly busy for three years, 
until our own nation had gone to war with those 
who had so long been waging war upon her. 
And that is how the stories which follow come to 
be told. 

Not that the entrance of the United States Into 
the war put a stop to the activities of the Squad. 
I have already cited those who entered the na- 



I 



THE BOMB SQUAD 7 

tlonal service. Their presence In the Naval and 
Military Intelligence, their close relations with 
those whom they left behind in headquarters, with 
such men as Commander Spencer Eddy and Lieu- 
tenant Albert Fish of the Nav)^ Colonel Biddle 
and Major Potter of the Army, and with the 
Corps of Intelligence Police, made possible a 
degree of cooperation in spy-hunting in New York 
which would have been Impossible to develop 
within a short time with any other set of men, and 
which went far towards preserving our domestic 
security. 



II 

WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 

The trend of events in early 19 15 made it 
apparent that the Bomb Squad would be called 
upon to handle more and more cases of attempted 
violation of neutrality. Anyone who remembers 
our national mind at that time will recall that 
It was not yet made up and very liable to attacks 
of brainstorm. Every person was seeing events 
of unheard of violence and magnitude pass him 
pell-mell, giving no warning, and not waiting for 
comment, and he was too dazed to watch any 
single event with any high degree of balanced 
judgment or reasoning partisanship. It was a 
troubled hour, and one in which it behooved us 
of the Police Department to keep our heads cool 
and our eyes open. The Bomb Squad had to 
act as a safety valve. 

By the summer of 19 15 war orders placed by 
the AUied governments in the autumn and winter 
of 19 14 were being filled and shipped overseas in 

8 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 9 

great quantities. By this time, too, the German 
navy showed no more sign of coming out of Kiel 
in force than it had shown for a year past. The 
task of delaying, diverting or destroying those 
shipments devolved upon the Germans in Amer- 
ica. It took no superhuman amount of reasoning 
to combine the abnormal destruction of property 
in New York with the strong suspicion of German 
activity and to arrive at a decision to check up 
wherever it was humanly possible the sources and 
agencies of destruction. 

Late in the autumn, in our work on the water- 
front, we found a man who, we decided, was 
worth watching. We learned gradually that Paul 
Koenig was a pretty w^ell-known figure along both 
banks of the Hudson, and that he carried, as 
chief detective for the Hamburg-American Line, 
a certain amount of authority. That steamship 
line, which within a week of the outbreak of war 
had attempted to send ships to sea under false 
cargo manifests to supply the German naval raid- 
ers, now had more time than business on its hands 
as its entire fleet was' tied up in Hoboken. And 
yet in spite of the dull times which we knew had 
been thrust upon them, their man Koenig was 
curiously busy, and we became busily curious to 
find out why. 



lo THROTTLED 



I 



We were more curious than successful at first. 
We assigned men to follow him and observe his 
habits and haunts. This was not as easy as it 
might have been with another man, for the De- i| 
partment of Justice had already tried it and had 
come to the conclusion that he was not worth fol- 
lowing. 

Now a good shadow is born, not made. The 
moment the man followed realizes or even sus- 
pects that he is being followed, he becomes a 
problem and either gets away or conducts himself 
in a way which disarms suspicion and sometimes 
embarrasses the pursuit. Koenig, a man of keen 
animal senses, was unusually quick in discover- 
ing his shadower. It used to confuse certain 
agents considerably to have him disappear around 
a corner, and when the agent quickened hi^s pace 
and swept around the same corner after him, to 
have Koenig pop out of a doorway with a laugh 
for his pursuer which meant that the day's work 
had gone for nothing. I have known men who 
were excellent detectives and poor shadows. 
Sometimes they were too large and conspicuous, 
sometimes they were over-zealous, sometimes they 
excited suspicion by being over-cautious; rare 
enough was the combination of artlessness and 
skill which made a man a good shadow, told him 




Copyright, International Film Service 



^"rjTinni, jniernaitonai rum oervice 

Paul Koenig, the Hamburg- American employe, who supplied 
and directed agents of German violence in America 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY. it 

when to saunter away in the opposite direction, 
when to pass his man, and how to efface himself. 
It is, I think, the instinct of the good fisherman 
who knows just how much line to run out, and 
just when to exert the pressure. For Koenig was 
a slippery fish. 

By a new method of " tailing " or shadowing, 
we learned that he frequented several popular 
German places in the city, such as Pabst's in 
Columbus Circle, the German Club, in Central 
Park West, where Dr. Albert, Boy-Ed and von 
Papen frequently went, Luchow's restaurant in 
14th Street, as well as the good American hotels 
Belmont and Manhattan. Both of the hotels are 
centrally situated, and have several entrances, in- 
cluding direct connection from the basement with 
the Subway — one of the easiest places to lose 
oneself in the city. (A murderer not many 
months ago avoided arrest for two days by rid- 
ing back and forth in Subway trains.) But such 
places as these were no more than the natural 
points towards which any German might gravi- 
tate, and we could never pick up a scrap of con- 
versation to give us a lead in any specific direction. 

The fact remained that he was busy, going and 
coming, and that he conducted a good deal of his 
business from his office in the Hamburg-American 



12 THROTTLED 

building at 45 Broadway. We might as well 
have tried to penetrate to Berlin with a brass band 
as to have entered the building for information. 
But there was one advantage we could take: we 
could " listen in " on his telephone wire. 

When the men tailing him reported in that he 
was in the Hamburg-American Building, and 
probably in his office, we cut in on his wire, and 
posted an officer at our receiver to take down all 
conversations which passed. The outgoing calls 
were disappointing. Koenig was no fool — or 
rather was a highly specialized fool — and was 
not careless enough to give information of aid 
and comfort to the enemy through such a gregari- 
ous medium as a public telephone wire. We lis- 
tened for a long while, in vain. . . . 

Then came a call which offered possibilities. A 
man's voice told Paul Koenig that it thought Paul 
Koenig was a " bull-headed Westphalian Dutch- 
man," and added other more lurid remarks. The 
conversation was short, but v/hile it lasted indi- 
cated that someone was not pleased with Mr. 
Koenig. Within the next few days the same voice 
called " P. K." again and told him several things 
it had forgotten to mention, all pointing to the 
fact that the owner of the unknown voice had been 
misused. 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 13 

We hunted up the number from which the dis- 
gruntled calls had been made. It was a public 
telephone pay-station in a saloon. Crucial events 
can almost always be traced to some trivial cir- 
cumstances — the poem " for the want of a nail 
the battle was lost " is an illustration of what I 
mean. We are not dealing here with possibilities 
but with facts, yet I cannot sometimes help specu- 
lating on the extent to which German atrocities 
might have been carried in New York and Canada, 
if we had not found a bartender with a good 
memory in that saloon. Yes, he remembered a 
fellow who had come in there at certain times to 
telephone. Yes, he came in once in a while. 
Didn't know his name, but thought he lived around 
the corner at such and such a number. At that 
number we found out the man's name — the bar- 
tender's description had been accurate. The 
name was George Fuchs. 

So to George Fuchs we mailed a letter, typed 
on the stationery of a wireless telegraph company, 
suggesting that we had a position for which we 
believed he was the proper man, and that we 
would be pleased to have him call at the office of 
the company, at an appointed hour, to discuss the 
work and wages. Fuchs did not show up at the 
appointed hour, which disturbed the plans mo- 



14 THROTTLED 

mentarily, but when he did arrive, he was greeted 
cordially by an executive of the " company " who 
proceeded to get acquainted with the applicant. 
The manner of the wireless person was so disarm- 
ing, his German was so good, and his certainty 
that Fuchs was the man for the job so taken for 
granted that the two adjourned to a nearby 
restaurant. (Detective Corell had a very good 
working knowledge of German.) 

"Who did you say you were working for?" 
Corell asked, across the crater of Fuchs's glass of 
beer. 

" That bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman," 
Fuchs sputtered. " He Is some relative of my 
mother's. She was a Prussian, though, Gott set 
dank! '' 

Corell laughed at the right time, and in the 
conversation which ensued drew out the man's 
grievance against Koenlg. In September Mr. and 
Mrs. Koenlg had paid a visit to the Fuchs house- 
hold in Niagara Falls, N. Y., where Fuchs lived 
with his mother In the Lochlel Apartments. The 
wonders of the Falls had received proper attention 
from the strangers, and Koenlg showed some In- 
terest in the Welland Canal, the channel through 
which shipping circumnavigates the Falls. He 
said that the waterway was closely guarded, other- 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 15 

wise he would like to go over and have a look 
at it, and suggested, as a convenient substitute, 
that Fuchs go over to Canada and take some 
snapshots of the locks for him. 

"Why don't you go yourself?'^ Fuchs asked. 

" They would probably pick me up if I did,'* 
Koenig replied. 

" Well, that's just why I won't take any camera 
over there with me," Fuchs rejoined. " But I'll 
go if you want a report." 

The bargain was closed. Fuchs, Koenig said, 
was the very man, as he was known on the Canad- 
ian side as George Fox, was an American by birth, 
and would not excite suspicion. So at 7 P. M. of 
September 30 — slightly more than a year since 
Horst von der Goltz and Captain von Papen had 
made their first abortive attempt to destroy the 
Canal — " Fox " registered at the Welland House 
in Welland, close by the waterway. There he 
spent the night. The next morning he went to 
Port Colborne, the Lake Erie mouth of the Canal, 
and during the balance of the day followed its 
course northward, making mental notes of the 
shipping and the construction and guarding of the 
locks. By night he had reached Thorold, where 
he found a room, jotted down his observations, 
and spent the night. The next day he covered the 



i6 .THROTTLED 

balance of the 27 miles to Lake Ontario, noting 
the number of locks, and the fact that there were 
two or three armed soldiers on guard at each. 
With his head full of good ideas for bad plans he 
reached Niagara Falls again that night — Oc- 
tober 2. 

Koenig was enthusiastic over his report, but 
when Fuchs had written it down he decided that 
it would be hazardous to have such a document 
found on his person. " Mail it to me at Post 
Office Box 840 in New York. Sign It just 
* George ' — nobody would know who that was 
even if they did find it." He went back to New 
[York. Fuchs heard nothing from him for a few 
days, except that action had been deferred. Then 
the country cousin began to Importune the city 
cousin, and Koenig suggested that he come down 
to New York to work for him. Which Fuchs did, 
and on October 8 was placed on the payroll of the 
" Bureau of Investigation " at eighteen dollars a 
week. Koenig arranged that Fuchs was to hire 
men who would row a boatload of dynamite across 
the upper Niagara River to smuggle it into Canada, 
and he had meanwhile arranged with two others, 
Richard Emil Leyendecker, his chief assistant, and 
Fred Metzler, his secretary, to carry out a definite 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 17 

plan to sever the main artery of lake traffic by 
blowing It to pieces. 

By Sunday, November 7, Fuchs had been oc- 
cupied in several odd jobs for Koenig, such as 
spying on outward-bound cargoes along the water- 
front, doing special guard duty at Dr. Albert's 
office, and going over to Hoboken to frighten a 
poor German agent named Franz Schulenberg, 
who had come on from the west to collect money 
from von Papen. On that Sunday he was sick and 
did not report for duty. He asked for his regular 
pay, however, and Koenig refused it, doubting 
that Fuchs had really been too ill to report, and 
holding that illness should never Interfere with 
service to the Fatherland. This created bad 
blood between the two. On November 22 Koenig 
discharged him for " constant quarrelling with an- 
other operative, drinking, and disorderly habits,'* 
and announced that he would not be paid for his 
services of the previous day, when he had refused 
to go on duty In a river-launch. That $2.57 
due Fuchs had poisoned his soul against Koenig, 
and he had grown so bitter that the result we al- 
ready know — evidence was at last in our hands 
for an arrest. 

It was a case for federal prosecution, obviously, 



1 8 THROTTLED 

so we called In Captain William Offley and Agent 
Adams, an able operative of the Department of 
Justice. A few hours later Koenig was placed 
under arrest. He resented the intrusion, and 
snapped to Barnitz : " Anyone who interferes 
with Germans or the German Government will be 
punished!" His house up-town was searched 
and that search disclosed, among other matters, 
an item which is unquestionably one of the richest 
prizes of the spy hunt in America. 

It was Paul Koenlg's little black memorandum 
book — a loose-leaf affair, scrupulously typewrit- 
ten, and brought down to within a day of his 
arrest. A fanatic on office efficiency might have 
conceived it, but none but a German would have 
kept it posted up. For it told the story of his 
Bureau of Investigation with a devotion to detail 
almost religious. 

The Hamburg-American Line probably never 
thought that when they assigned a shrewd ruffi-an 
named Paul Koenig to Investigate an alleged case 
of wharfage graft In Jersey City away back in 
19 1 2 they had established a '' Bureau of Investi- 
gation." But Paul Koenig knew better. He sur- 
rounded his lightest activities with an air of mys- 
tery and efficiency true to the best of amateur-de- 
tective tradition. He called his first case by a 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 19 

mystic number, he conferred the ominous alias of 
*' XXX " upon himself, hired a man named Fred 
Metzler as his secretary, and convinced himself 
that he and Metzler were a bureau. In the light 
of the all-absorbing Importance which his bureau 
held for him, we are not surprised (and we must 
not smile), when we see chronicled neatly in 
his little black book that on May 13, 19 13, he 
rented a room at 45 Broadway for " new offices," 
on May 24 his first private telephone was Installed, 
on Nov. 19 a steel cabinet was purchased for the 
files of the department, on May 28 of 19 14 the 
adjoining room was added to Room 82, and 
Room 82 was converted into a private office for 
the chief, and on July 14 a new safe was purchased 
and placed in the office. It may be that the as- 
sassination of the Archduke Ferdinand had some- 
thing to do with that last item, for it is certain 
that the Hamburg-American Line knew that war 
was coming well In advance of the declaration. 
At any rate, we find that on July 31, 19 14, be- 
fore England and Germany had actually gone to 
war, and on the same day that the director of 
the Hamburg-American in New York received in- 
structions from Berlin that war was coming and 
that he was expected to supply German naval 
vessels in American waters — on that day Paul 



20 THROTTLED 

Koenig began his war duties by placing a special 
guard on all the piers and vessels of the Line in 
New York Harbor. 

Up to this time the cases Koenig had handled 
were matters of shipping — stowaways, fires, 
steerage rates, charges against ships' officers. On 
August 22 he became a German military spy. We 
find it entered In his own words : 

" Aug. 22. German Government, with consent 
of Dr. Buenz, entrusted me with the handling of 
a certain investigation. Military attache von 
Papen called at my office later and explained the 
nature of the work expected. (Beginning of 
Bureau's services for Imperial German Govern- 
ment.)" 

The *' certain' investigation " consisted in sending 
two men to Canada to spy on the Valcartier train- 
ing camp where the first Canadian Expeditionary 
Force was being mobilized, and to report to the 
military attache their state of readiness, in order 
that he might try some means of keeping them at 
home if it were not already too late. What von 
Papen had in mind was dynamiting the Welland 
Canal; it failed, but the case is of momentary in- 
terest to us here because it marked the beginning 
of a service on Koenlg's part which grew very fast 
and extended In many and diverse directions. 



I 



^ WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 21 

The Bureau was divided Into three parts, the 
pier division, the special detail division, and the 
secret service division, or " Gehelmdienst." No 
one was allowed to forget that P. K. was head of 
all three. In his rules and regulations he records, 
among other gems, these: 

" :^2. In order to safeguard the secrets and 
affairs of the department prior to receiving a 
caller, hereafter my desk must be entirely cleared 
of all papers excepting those pertaining to the 
business in hand. 

'* #9. All persons related to me, however dis- 
tant, will be barred from employment with the 
Bureau of Investigation. This does not apply to 
my wife. 

" #6. It has been found detrimental to the 
discipline of the Office to Invite direct employees 
of the Bureau to my residence or other place so- 
cially, or to accept their invitations, therefore this 
practice must cease. This ruling does not apply 
to agents of the Secret Service Division nor to 
direct employees If engaged with me on an opera- 
tion which requires either social entertainment or 
travelling." 

He had an elaborate and complicated outlay of 
badges, shields and photographic identification 
cards for each operative, for which each operative 
stood the expense. His meticulous attention to 
detail, and the diligent caution which he observed 



22 THROTTLED 

at all times is indicated In a list of aliases which 
he set forth in the memorandum book. In 26 
cases listed he used 26 different names — none of 
them his own. For example, in what he called 
*' D-Case 250," in dealing with an operative 
named " Sjurstadt " Koenig was known to 
Sjurstadt only as "Watson"; in D-Case 316, 
when he negotiated with his agent von Pilis (a 
propagandist who was later interned, by the way) 
Koenig was " Bode." He devised a new name 
for himself for every new case, and sometimes 
used two or three names in dealing with different 
individuals in the same case. Naturally a man 
of as many identities as Koenig had to keep a 
record of who he was, and so his list of aliases 
furnished the government with an excellent cata- 
logue of the pies in which he had his tough fingers. 
Each of his own employees in the Secret Service 
Division was known to him in three ways : by his 
Christian (or rather, his German) name, by a 
number, and by a special pair of initials. Thus 
Richard Emil Leyendecker, the art-woods dealer 
associated with him in the Welland Canal affair, 
was Secret Agent Number 6, known as " B. P."; 
Otto Mottola, a member of the New York Police 
Department was Secret Agent Number 4, known 
as " A. S. (formerly A. M.)." The connections 



o 




DIVISIOH.^ 
Jsed by XZX. 




^ O O "^ 


^-^ SECRET 


SERVICE 

Aliaaes I 
D-Cases 




3ECRBT SERVICE DIVMIOB. 


List Of 


Ciphers Used Tn 




ConfldenilaT nflpnrt« 




(6ot.iyi4 - Septll9TF) 


SJurstadt 


#250 


Watson 






Markow 


#260 


von Wegener 




oOo 


Horn 


#277 


Fischer 






Portack 


#279 


Westerberg 




5000 I. G. Onbassy 


Bems 


#306 


Werner 






Scott 
Molntyre 


#309 
|311 


Werner 
Bode 




7000 n Military Attache 


Miller 


#314 


Reiniiardt 




8000 " " Naval Attache 


Harre 


#315 


Kaufmann 






Kienzle 


#316 


Wegener 




9000 " " Commercial Attache 


Wiener 


#316 


Wegener 






von Pills 


#316- 
#325 


Bode 
Reinherdt 






Bums 




Stahl 


#328 


Stemmler 






Coleman 


#335 


Schuster 




7354 - - - _ von Knorr 


Schleindl 


#343 


Wohler (Paul) 






leyendeoker 

Peldheim 


#344 


Heyne 




7371 - - _ _ Tomaseck 


#367 


Winters 






Warburg 


#362 


Blohm 




7379 Tokio 


Van de Bund 


J358 


Taylor 






Lewis 


#366 


Burg 




7381 - - - - Copenhagen 


Hammond 


#357 


Decker (W.?.) 






Uffelmann 


#370 


Schwartz 




7600 - - _ _ Burns Agency 


Hirschland 


^371 
#371 
#371 


Gilnther 




Neuhaus 


Giinther 




9001 Herbert Boas 


Ornstein 


Gunther 






Wltzel 


#371 


wShler 






Plochmann 


#375 


Breitung 






Archer 


#289 


Mendez 






Bettes 





Goebels 






Relth 


#382 


Brandt 

J 




J 



Random Pages from "P. K.'s Little Black Book" 



o o 

3E0Rgr SHRVICE DlVISIOg. 

SAFETY BLOCK SYSTEM 

Oper'ativea of the S. S. Division, 
V7hen receiving instructions from me or 
through the medium of ray secretary as 
to designating meeting places, will un- 
derstand that such instructions must he 
translated as follows: 

For week Nov. 28 to Dec. 4 (midnight 



A street number in Ifenhattan named 
over the telephone means that the meety 
ing will take place 5 blocks further 
uptown than the street mentioned. 

Pennsylvania R. R. Station means 
Grand Central Depot. 

Kaiserhof means General Post Of- 
fice, in front of P. 0. Box H40. 

Hotel Ansonia means Cafe in Hotel 
Manhattan (basement). 

Hotel Belmont means at the Bar in 
Pabst' Columbus Circle. 

Brooklyn Bridge means Bar in Unter 
den Linden. 

For week Dec«5 to Dec. 12 (midnight' 



Code to remain the same as previ- 
ous week. 

For week Deo«12 to Dec. 19 (midnight 



A street number in Manhattan nairied 
over the telephone means that the meet- 
ing will take place 5 blocks further 
dovmtown than the street mentioned. 



O O 

SECRET SERVICE DIVI3I0J. 
(Oeheimdienst) 



RoleB and Regulatlona. 
1915 

#1. Beginning with Uovember 6th, no blue 
copies are to be made of reports 
submitted in connection with D-Case 
#343, and the original reports will 
be sent to H.M.Q. Instead of the du- 
plicates, as formerly, 

#2. In order to accomplish better results 
in connection with D-Case #343, and 
to shorten the stay of the inform- 
ing agent at the place of meeting, 
it has been decided to discontinue 
the former practice of dining with 
this agent prior to receiving his 
report. It will also be made a rule 
to refrain from working .on other mat- 
ters until the informeuit in this case 
has been fully heard; and all data 
taken down in shorthand, (11-11-15) 

#3. Beginning with November 28th, 1915, 
all operations designated as D-Cases 
will be handled exclusively by the 
Secret Service Division, the Head- 
quarters of which will not be at the 
Central Office, as heretofore. This 
change will result in discontinuing 
utilizing operatives or employees 
attached to the Central Office, Divi- 
sion for Special Detail and Pier 
Division, On the other hand, great 



Random Pages from "P. K.'s Little Black Book" 



iWESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 23 

of the bureaus were mentioned In his reports by 
numbers, the Imperial German Embassy being 
5000, von Papen being 7000, Boy-Ed 8000, and 
'Dr. Heinrich Albert, the commercial attache of 
the embassy, 9000. 

In the same way he disguised his meeting places. 
In his instructions to the Secret Service Division 
we find this : 

" Operatives of the S. S. Division when receiv- 
ing instructions from me or through the medium of 
my secretary ?s to designating meeting places will 
understand that such instructions must be trans- 
lated as follows: 

'^ For week Nov. 28 to Dec. 4 (midnight). 

" A street number in Manhattan named over 
the telephone means that the meeting will take 
place 5 blocks further uptown than the street 
mentioned. 

** Pennsylvania R. R. Station means Grand Cen- 
tral Depot. 

" Kaiserhof means General Post Office, In front 
of P. O. Box 840. 

" Hotel Ansonia means cafe In Hotel Manhat- 
tan (basement). 

" Hotel Belmont means at the bar In Pabst's 
(Columbus Circle. 

*' Brooklyn Bridge means bar In Unter den 
Linden." 

Each week he rearranged this code, so that any- 



24 THROTTLED 

one who thought that cutting in on a telephone call 
meant knowing where Koenig was bound was not 
likely to find him there. The man knew his Ger- 
man New York, and had numerous convenient 
meeting places where he could meet an agent and 
converse undisturbed, such as a German hotel at 
Third Avenue and 4.26. Street, or a German bar 
at Broadway and i loth Street, or a lodging house 
at South and Whitehall Streets, near the lower 
tip of the island, or a saloon connected with a 
Turkish bath in Harlem. He not only made it 
almost impossible to trace him by tapping his own 
wire, but his operatives were instructed to call him 
from pay-station telephones in locations where 
there was not one chance in a million of identify- 
ing the person who had called. Fuchs, of course, 
was the one-millionth chance, but Fuchs was no 
longer obeying Koenig's orders, was persistent, 
and careless. Altogether Koenig had built up a 
system of caution on paper which almost beat the 
game, and which enabled him to conduct a large 
volume of business. 

The functions of his departments were clearly 
defined. The pier division guarded the piers and 
vessels of the Line, and furnished him informa- 
tion of sailings from the New York waterfront, 
which he in turn passed on to the naval attache, 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 25 

Boy-Ed. Through this division he was able to 
keep in touch with the waterfront element for 
whatever service of violence might be necessary, 
and to keep a fairly complete record of shipping. 
The special detail division was assigned to the 
guarding of von Bernstorff's summer place at 
Cedarhurst, Long Island, Dr. Albert's office in 
the Hamburg-American building, von Papen's 
office at 60 Wall Street, and the Austrian con- 
sulate in New York. This division conducted 
every week a test to determine whether or not 
Dr. Albert was being shadowed. We find entered 
in his notes on his operatives this : 

" H. J. Wilkens is commended by me for good 
service rendered thus far as attendant on Dr. Al- 
bert. This commendation is based on a note re- 
ceived from the latter under date of November 
12, reading as follows: 
Dear Mr. Koenig: 

The service rendered by your bureau's opera- 
tive, H. J. Wilkens, have proven entirely satis- 
factory. 

Yours truly, 
(Signed) H. T. Albert.'" 

Apparently Koenig's performance of his duty to 
the German cause encouraged the high officials of 
the German government in the United States to 
rely upon him, for these posts were gradually 






(i ( 



26 THROTTLED 

placed under his direction during the summer of 
1915, the Embassy at Cedarhurst on July 3, Dr. 
Albert's office on Sept. i, von Papen's office on 
Oct. 26, and the Austrian Consulate on December 
15 — three days previous to Koenlg's arrest, and 
less than a week after Captain von Papen, who 
was returning to his own country by the request 
of our country, had called P. K. to the German 
Club to " express his thanks for the services this 
Bureau have rendered to him.'' " At the same 
time," the little notebook confides, *' he bid me 
Good-Bye." We find these functions mentioned 
with a suggestion of reverence. 

But the autobiography of Paul Koenig resumes 
its dark shroud of mystery when it turns to the 
functions of the division of secret service. There 
he is the dominating figure, a sort of cross between 
a Dr. Morlarlty and a gorilla, a slippery conniver 
one minute and a pugnacious bully the next, con- 
victed by his own complimentary reports. It was 
in handling the " D-cases " already mentioned 
that he employed his many false names, his secret 
numbers, his elusive places of appointment, and 
his essentially Teutonic discipline. The nature 
of the work of this division may best be suggested 
by citing a case which appears rather often in 
his records — Case D-343. 



o 



o 



are to be knomi as Central Office 
men, and do not come under the 
lurlsdlctlon of the Pier Division. 
(11-23-15) 

#12. Beginning with today, specific plans 
have been decided upon as to the 
best manner in which to keep news- 
papers and clippings dealing with the 
war and political subjects. Clip- 
pings that refer to D-Cases of this 
Bureau will continue to be placed in 
the private files, together with 
their respective reports. An excep- 
tion to this particular rule may be 
made in the event that there are too 
many clippings at hand, in which case 
they may be bound together and kept 
separate, as is being done in the 
case of operation D-J332. Other clip 
pings are to be mounted on cardboard, 
and the name of the newspaper and 
date typewritten thereon. Articles 
of interest that cover an entire page 
or more will not be clipped, but will 
be kept whole in a temporary folder 
in view of binding same later. This, 
also applies to copies which doftl 
with matters on which reports hare 
been rendered. (12-7-15) 



O 



O 



may not be in my interest. The sten- 
ographer of the Central Office, how- 
ever, will continue to write out 
checks as heretofore, but the check- 
book itself, will always be kept 
under lock and key, (11-23-15) 

#11. Operatives of the Pier Division in 
future will carry as their means of 
identification only the Bureau's 
identification card, on the reverse 
side of which a photograph of the 
bearer will be pasted, with my sig- 
nature written above and telow the 
photo. The front side of the card 
will also bear my signature. These 
men will not carry any more shields, 
as in the past. Any changes in the 
personnel of tSe Pier Division, such 
as attachments and detachments, will 
be brought to the attention of the 
Marine Superintendent or other Super- 
intends at whose piers they are sta- 
tloaed. There will be special opera- 
tives selected to check up operatives 
of the Pier Division and employees of 
the piers, who will not be named to 
anyone in advance, but who will, at 
intervals, make their inspections, car- 
rying with them as their means of i- 
dentlflcation, a commission consisting 
of a letter on Company's stationery, 
setting forth their authority, which 
will be dxily signed by me and counter 
signed by one of the Company's Vie* 
Directors. These special operativea 



Random Pages from "P. K.'s Little Black Book" 



o 



- 10 



o 



Sr^fon^r^^oTh^ list Of aseigx^enta 
for the Pier DivlBlon he lid no^^^o ^ 
«ard duty at the Ho^>oteeii Plere during 
SJ night of Hovemher 20th to Slet. In 
order^o he at his °ew po^t G^.Sta 
tlon #3, he was given this ni^ht ofr 
with pay. to he charged to Case #242. 
SgeB While on duty at G.G.Statlon #3 
will be the same as heretofore. 

H T.Staden on Hovember 22d, at 10 A. 
a ;, report e d to Central Office duty 
as instructed. He will worJc ioln*!? 
with Opt. W.H.M.. his salary to. remain 
unchanged. 

H. Pearaall . on Saturday, Hovemher EOth 
UTJOn being "instructed hy Opt^ rcfplo,. 
that he was to be assigned to the Pier 
Division, declared that he refused to 
acceT)t this post, and tendered his 
resignation. According to a ]^"*®a 
report submitted by Opt. H.J.W., H. -r. 
acted insolently, and belittled this- 
Bureau's servlbe. As H. P. did not 
tender his resignation to me person- 
ally or by raall, I did not take cog- 
nizance of what he told Opt. H.J.W. re- 
irardin^ leaving the department, but 
discharged him at once upon Jiearlng of 
his conduct. His services ended on 
Hoveraber 2l8t at 10 A.IX. While he has 
been an alert watchman, he has often 
proven to be a oranky, quarrelsome em- 
ployee, who was the oause of a great 
deal of trouble while on the piers. 



o 



11 - 



o 



1 



I congratulate myself on having ridden 
this Bilreau of an ignorant, stubborn 
and hot-headed man of the caliber of 
Pearsall, whose last words to stenog- 
rapher P.Metzler were that he would not 
trust me for a dollar. While it Is un- 
derstood that this former employee is 
disbarred from reinstatement, he will 
never be given any sort of a recommend- 
ation, nor will I receive him. He is 
to be kept out of the office entirely, 

George Puchs was dismissed from the Bu- 
reau's services on November 22d at 4,30 
P.M. The reas6n for his discharge is 
general conduct displayed on Company's 
piers, constant quarreling with another 
operative, drinking and disorderly hab- 
itrs. He will receive ho pay for the 
alight of Novanber 2l8t to 22d, during 
which he refused to Join Opt. J, P.O. in 
his duties on Company's Launch #4. 

William MoCulley . on Hovember 15th at' 
3 A.M., was appointed Chief of the Se- 
cret Service Division, his duties to 
commence on Sunday, 'November 28th, at 
9 A.M. Salary $28. per wepk. Upon his 
word he promised to remain in this cap- 
acity for at least six months and to be 
at my disposal at all hours. He is to 
take a residence in Hew York City, and 
will be known as "Wllli^ Jiaolntyre" atf 
the Headquarters of the Secret Service 
Mvisioo to be eatabllshed on December 
Ist', 1915, 



-i.B.Lyendeoker . on Hovember 23d, at 
11 P.M., was appointed Assistant to 1 



the 



Random Pages from "P. K.'s Little Black Book" 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 27 

Rule number i of the division stated ; 

" Beginning with Nov. 6 (1915) no blue copies 
are to be made of reports submitted in connection 
with D-Case 343, and the original reports will 
be sent to H. M. G. instead of the duplicates, as 
formerly." 

" H. M. G." we learned from the key to spe- 
cial personages for whom the division was con- 
ducting investigations, was yon Papen himself. 
Rule 2 reads: 

" In order to accomplish better results In con- 
nection with D-Case 343, and to shorten the stay 
of the informing agent at the place of meeting, it 
has been decided to discontinue the former prac- 
tice of dining with this agent prior to receiving 
his report. It will also be a rule to refrain from 
working on other matters until the informant in 
this case has been fully heard, and all data taken 
down in shorthand." 

The book revealed that In D-Case 343 Koenig's 
alias was Woehler, and his agent's name Schleindl. 
In his notes on operatives Koenig had written that 
*' Friedrich Schleindl . . . who was first known 
as Operative #51, and later as Agent C. O., be- 
ginning with October 21st will be called Agent 
B. 1." This enabled us to Interpret a further 
regulation of the division, to this effect. 



28 THROTTLED 

*' Agent B. I. has been requested not to call 
again at the Central Office, this ruling to take 
effect immediately. Other arrangements will be 
made to meet him elsewhere. Whether or not 
the stenographer of the Central Office will con- 
tinue to write reports covering D-Case 343 will be 
determined later." 

Rule 4 read: 

" Supplementing Rule 2, It has been decided that 
I refrain from drinking beer or liquor with my 
supper prior to receiving Agent B. I., for the rea- 
son that I wish to be perfectly fresh and well 
prepared to receive his reports." 

And Rule 3 contained this passage: 

". . . great care Is to be taken that operatives 
and agents of the Secret Service Division remain 
entirely unknown to members of the Central Of- 
fice and other divisions. These regulations do 
not apply to D-Case 343, which has been handled 
since the beginning of July ( 1 9 1 5 ) with the knowl- 
edge of employees not belonging to the Secret 
Service Division. Until more favorable arrange- 
ments can be made this practice may be con- 
tinued." 

Here clearly was an unusually important case. 
The notes Indicated that Koenig was receiving 
frequent reports of great value from this Schlelndl, 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 29 

had been receiving them for at least five months, 
was reporting them to von Papen, and intended to 
safeguard his obtaining further information. 
When a German voluntarily forswears his beer, 
something serious is on foot. 

Lieut. Barnitz, with Detectives Walsh and Fen- 
elly, arrested Schleindl the same day we closed 
in on Koenig. In his pocket was a cablegram 
referring to Russian munitions. He was a Ger- 
man reservist, born in Bavaria. At the outbreak 
of war he was a clerk In the National City Bank 
of New York, and lived away up in the Bronx, 
and in the first reaction to war he reported at the 
German Consulate for duty. Months passed, and 
he had not been called upon, when one night he 
met a German who told him to report at the Hotel 
Manhatiian to meet another German named 
Wagoner. " You'll find him in the bar," added 
his informant. 

*' Wagoner," who was Paul Koenig himself, 
met the youth, and playing on his patriotism drew 
from him the information that he had access to 
many cablegrams to and from the Allied govern- 
ments through the bank concerning the purchase 
and shipment of war supplies. Offering Schleindl 
a retainer of $25 a week, Koenig told him to steal 
from the files all such messages he could lay his 



30 THROTTLED 

hands on, together with copies of express-bills 
showing when the goods were delivered to the 
piers for shipment, all data relating to the prices 
paid, detailed descriptions of the purchases, and 
any other particulars which would help the Ger- 
man Government to complete its knowledge of 
what supplies America was shipping abroad. 
Schleindl grew quite enthusiastic in the work. 
Starting with light thefts, he gradually grew 
bolder, until he was In a position to steal docu- 
ments night after night, take them to his ap- 
pointment with Koenig, have them copied, and 
arrive at the Bank early enough the following 
morning to put them back where they belonged. 
Friday night was the regular appointment, but 
often messages of big shipments came In and he 
relayed the news at once to his chief. The ex- 
tra $25 a week practically doubled his earning 
power, and made devotion to the Fatherland very 
attractive — so much so that he began to be 
afraid that Koenig, who was merely the receiving 
station for his reports, and who took no risks him- 
self, would receive more than his share of credit. 
If there were any iron crosses to be given out, 
or any ribbons for foreign service, Schleindl felt 
that he had earned his, so he forwarded to his 
brother in Austria from time to time stenographic 





Alexander Dietrich ens 



International Film Service, Inc. 



Frederick Schleindl 




Schleindl and Dietrichens at a German party 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 31 

notes written In the Bavarian dialect which would 
be especially difficult of translation. In order to 
evade the censor he tore them Into scraps and 
sifted them Into the folds of newspapers which 
went unmolested through the British mail censors 
at Kirkwall. These scraps, pieced together and 
translated Into reports, were forwarded by his 
brother to German officials. 

Schlelndl's zeal had led him Into other chan- 
nels of German activity. At college In Germany 
he had had a friend named Alexander DIetrlchens, 
later known variously as Willish, Sander, Glass, 
and Lizlus — one of those Riga Russians of Ger- 
man parentage who have served Bolshevism so 
eminently in Russia. In 19 15 DIetrlchens was In 
America, and the two renewed their friendship. 
He said he was eager to serve the Fatherland, and 
that he only wanted to know who was supplying 
munitions to the Allies to start a campaign of 
destruction against them. He suggested the Du 
Pont factories at Wilmington, and asked the young 
bank clerk to come along. Schleindl, impression- 
able and emotional, had not the courage. He 
confessed to me that he wept at the thought, and 
that he asked DIetrlchens whether any harm could 
come to him If the explosion killed anyone. 
" Very likely," DIetrlchens answered cheerfully. 



32 THROTTLED 

Schleindl then declined, but he helped the dyna- 
miter to the extent of keeping an occasional bomb 
or a package of dynamite for him during the day 
in his locker or under his desk at the bank. The 
main cache where Dietrichens stored his explo- 
sives was near Tenafly, New Jersey, but when 
Schleindl and I visited it, in a deserted spot al- 
most a mile from the nearest building, the shanty 
was empty. 

Schleindl was tried, convicted and sentenced to 
an indeterminate term in the penitentiary, for the 
theft of documents. Koenig pleaded guilty to the 
charge, but sentence was suspended on him owing 
to the greater importance of the Welland charges. 

The Schleindl and Dietrichens cases are only 
two examples of many to which the little black 
book gave clues. It suggested investigations into 
many others, for it was a real storehouse of names, 
and knowing Koenig's close relationship with the 
highest German authorities in the United States, 
it contributed a large number of Items to the bill 
of complaint against Germany which provoked 
the President's Flag Day warning of 191 6. 
Koenig's mere mention of the name of *' Horn " 
in D-Case 277 gave evidence of the German spon- 
sorship of the attempt of Werner Horn to blow 
up the Vanceboro bridge in February, 19 15; the 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 33 

name " Stahl " in D-Case 328 indicated by 
Koenig's own hand that it was he who paid 
Gustave Stahl for the false affidavits that the 
Lusttania had carried guns; the name " Kienzle " 
in D-Case 316 was the name of a man who was 
involved in trying to blow up vessels sailing for 
France and England; the name " Hammond " in 
D-Case 357 led to the disclosure that the Bureau 
of Investigation, although chiefly engaged in spy- 
ing and destroying plots, sometimes ran other and 
more delicate errands for von Bernstorff. 

Posing this time as " W. H. Becker " Koenig 
called on one J. C. Hammond, a writer and pub- 
licity man who had offices at 34th Street and 
Broadway. To Hammond he stated that from 
the standpoint of the Germans in America two 
newspapers were taking irritating and unfriendly 
attitudes. These were the New York World and 
the Providence Journal. Both papers had taken, 
soon after the outbreak of war, definite stands 
on the American issues involved, and both pur- 
sued the subject in a typically thorough fashion, 
the Providence paper obtaining much of its in- 
formation from sympathetic British sources, and 
the World having an influential position politically 
which led it across the trail of what the news-' 
paper men call " big stories." The Providence 



34 JHROTTLED 

Journal in fact emerged from comparative ob- 
scurity during the early months of war with start- 
ling charges against German agents both here and 
abroad, supported by evidence which seemed in- 
credible though of sound origin. These stories 
were republished widely through the country. It 
was undoubtedly having a powerful effect upon 
the public, for the country, dazed with the fact 
of war, was ready to take sides against the na- 
tion which was apparently guilty of the worst 
acts. Some of those charges were true, and al- 
though they seemed at that time so fantastic as 
to be almost impossible, the members of the Ger- 
man Embassy knew they were true and squirmed 
inwardly every time a fresh one burst out. The 
World had a habit of not only spreading excit- 
ing news articles over its front page, but lending 
color to them by publishing photographs of sup- 
porting documents to prove their authenticity. So 
von Bernstorff and the attaches, after having tried 
to bring influence to bear in many subtle ways to 
curb the publications, called in Koenig, and he 
made his little pilgrimage to Hammond's office. 
He offered the publicity agent a large sum of 
money to find out what exposures the two papers 
had still in the ice-box, ready to release. Later, 
he increased this to a blanket offer of any sum 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 35 

which Hammond should name, provided the lat- 
ter could induce the papers to turn over to him 
the articles and affidavits in their possession. The 
offer was not accepted. Hammond did not bite 
at the offer of a later reward of $100,000 which 
Koenig hung up to silence the publication of anti- 
German news in certain other large newspapers in 
the country, nor did he, as Koenig requested, go 
to England to visit Rintelen, to find out where 
Rintelen had left a trunk full of valuable papers 
when he fled the United States. 

The name " Lewis " mentioned in the citation 
of another case in the little black book revealed a 
further variation of the services of the Secret 
Service Division. The United States owned a 
large quantity of Krag-Joergensen rifles for which 
in that year of peace it had no use, but which sev- 
eral foreign governments would have been glad to 
buy. Commercial bachelors who were looking 
for war brides all took turns paying court to the 
rifles, and all without success. Readers of the 
newspapers may recall a small tempest which 
raged around the alleged sale of the rifles, and the 
charges levelled at one after another German 
of the attempt to purchase. Each new charge was 
denied by its victim, and it finally developed that a 
Mrs. Selma Lewis had been Involved in the nego- 



26 THROTTLED 

tiations, and was willing to pose as the purchaser. 
The " man behind " was Franz Rintelen, acting 
for the German Government, and the name 
^^ Lewis *' here In Koenig's notes, amplified by 
the full name and address of Mrs. Lewis in a 
small address book which we also captured, indi- 
cates that Koenig worked for Rintelen as well as 
the abler and more authentic members of the em- 
bassy of destruction which Germany kept In Amer- 
ica. 

I think I have made It clear that when the 
United States interned Paul Koenig It made 
prisoner one of the busiest men of the German spy 
system, and one of the strangest. He was 
physically powerful and mentally quick with a 
German sort of quickness. He had the most su- 
preme self-confidence it has been my pleasure to 
meet, and that caused his downfall. If he had 
administered his bureau In a manner calculated 
to breed loyalty In his employees he would have 
been more successful, but he conceived his work 
as a one-man job, and made his subordinates goose- 
step to his tune. It is certain that had he not 
set down with such care every item which would 
be useful to the United States In unearthing his 
actions, no one can say how long they would have 
continued. Napoleon had his Waterloo, how- 



o 



o 



HEALTH RUI.£3. 



#1. I have deolded. to refrain from chew- 
ing tohaoco in the office, as it dis- 
agrees with my health, thereby inter- 
fering with ray work. (lE-1-15) 

#2. I shall (Jrin)t no more whiskey. (l£-6) 



o 



o 



HEALTO TAWT.B #1. 



zx. 

9-12-14-1T-17-21-23-84-26-28-28- 

m. 

1-3-5-8-9-11-13-16- 



11 



Random Pages from "P K.'s Little Black Book" 



o 



o 



Sept.l. 



Oot.26. 



Nov, 12- 



Deo.lS. 



Deo. 15. 



safogroardin* of fhe Imperial 
Sermah Em'bassy at Cedarhurst, 
L* !• 

Bureau was entrusted with the 
aafegruarding. of the offices of 
Comraeroial Attache Dr. Albert. 

Bureau was entirusted with the 
safeguarding of the offices of 
the Military Attache. 

Began first investigation for 
AuBtro -Hungarian Government, 

It 6.30 P.M. Captain von Papen, 
Sernan Mlltary Attache, re- 
ceived me at the German Gluh 
to express his thanks for the 
serrioes which this Bureau have 
rendered to him. At the same 
time he bid me Good-Bye, 

Bureau was ent misted with the 
safegTiarding of the offices of 
the I, & R. Austro-Huhgarlan 
Consulate General, 



O 



O 



TTgm Qj< 

mpoaTAjr cases hajtdled. 

- 1913 - 

C.#17. Investigation He: Jersey City 
^fharfag-e Graft, 

C.#24. Investigation of Baggage Depart- 
ment, Hoboken, 

C.#32. Chinese Stowaways on 3.S. "PHIMZ 
JOACEIM", 7oy. 77, 

C.#40. Investigation Re: Thefts of Cargo 
on Atlas Pier, New York City, 

C.#41. 3.S."?RI£DRIGH DiiR GH03SE", Ar- 
rival at New York July 2, 1913, 

C.#49. Charges Made Against W. Barbe, 

Chief Officer, S. 3. "CARL 3CHURZ", 

C.#54. Investigation Re; 3.3."PRINZ 

PRIEDRICE WILHEUr, Arrived at 
New York on Jiine 3. 

C.#67. Fire on Board 3.3.''IUPERAT0R" on 
AQgnst 28, 

C.#69, Pire Patrol on 3,3,"iaPERAT0R". 
& eto. 

C.#70. Max Ludwlg Thomsen, Alias Thomp- 
son. 

C.#95. Charges Against Paul Koenig. 



Random Pages from "P. K.'s Little Black Book" 



WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY 37 

ever, and Paul Koenig had his notebook, and with 
the same scrupulous foresight the Indomitable 
*' XXX " left that notebook where we would be 
most likely to find It. 

It Is a rare treat, aside from its now past In- 
formative value. And it contains one real mys- 
tery which the Westphallan himself can alone clear 
up. The page headed " Health Rules " reads as 
follows : 

" :/^i. I have decided to refrain from chewing 
tobacco In the office as It disagrees with my health 
thereby Interfering with my work. (12-1-15.) 

^^ #2. I shall drink no more whiskey. 

1(12-6.)" 

Which leads one to believe that he saw the prac- 
tical value of an exemplary life. But we must 
wait for him to explain the page headed " Health 
Table," which reads: 

"XI 

•" 9-1 2-14--1 7-1 7-2 1-23-24-28-28. 

"XII 

The " XI " Is evidently November, of 19 15, the 
" XII " December. What did he do on those 
dates so accurately mentioned? Did temptation 
lead him twice from the path on the 17th and 



38 [THROTTLED 

28th of November? If so, what could this temp- 
tation have been? Is it possible that the same 
conscience which made him typewrite his rules of 
conduct weakened, and then remorse turned about 
and forced him to set down his lapses from grace? 
Is it further possible that each of the dates cited 
means that Paul Koenig broke his brand new 
health rules ten times in November and eight 
times in December, and chewed tobacco in office 
hours? 

We must wait in patience — some day his 
Westphalian conscience may answer. 



Ill 

PLAYING WITH FIRE 

The business of crime prevention and detection 
depends largely on the confidence one man has in 
another. That Is one reason why a " stool- 
pigeon " Is an uncomfortable ally on a case. You 
can not be sure that a man who associates with 
criminals and Is giving them away Is not giving 
the case away at the same time. His gang hates 
him for squealing, his evidence is the evidence of 
a traitor, and he Is a good person not to depend 
on. I make that point here because I have al- 
ways tried to avoid using stool-pigeons, and be- 
cause the story to follow will Illustrate what can 
be accomplished by a dependable man. 

The story really starts about twenty years ago. 
In the spring of 1900, an Italian from Paterson, 
N. J., Brescia by name, attended a meeting of 
anarchists in a house in Elizabeth Street, New 
York. The group was composed of two parties, 
one which we may call the progressives, and one 

39 



40 THROTTLED 

the Inactives. Brescia assailed the Inactives, de- 
nounced them as cowards, and stirred up so much 
dissension that the meeting broke up for fear of 
a police raid, and several of the members retaHated 
at Brescia by accusing him of being a police spy. 
He sailed for Italy, and on July 29, in the little 
Lombardi town of Monza, murdered King Hum- 
bert the Good. When the news was cabled to 
America it was hailed with proper grief by the 
public and with great joy by the anarchists who 
had called Brescia a traitor. His execution, 
which followed swiftly, made him a martyr. So 
to do him honor, the group was named the Brescia 
Circle. 

By 19 14 the membership of the circle was 
nearly 600. A cosmopolitan lot: Italians, 
Russians, Russian Jews, Germans, Austrlans, 
Spaniards and Americans, of both sexes. The 
leaders were agitators whose speaking ability had 
lifted them out of the ranks and who found an 
easier living by their wits than by their hands. 
The Bomb Squad knew something of their activi- 
ties and habits, for the past history of anarchist 
cases linked up certain names in a pointed way. 
We knew their fondness for bombs, and the 
records of the police department contain many 
instances of anarchists inspired to violence by the 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 41 

inflammatory speeches of such agitators, as their 
idol, Francisco Ferrer, had preached violence in 
Spain. The outbreak of war in Europe, from 
which so many of the group had migrated to 
America, and the promise of social confusion 
which it held for them had stirred the Brescia 
Circle more than a little. The active members 
met regularly in the basement of a building at 
301 East io6th Street, a shabby house In a shabby 
district east of the New York Central tracks. 
These meetings, which occurred usually on a Sun- 
day, as many of the members were working during 
the week, were addressed by such notorious 
anarchists as Emma Goldman, Becky Edelson, 
Frank Mandese, Carlo Tresca and Pietro Allegra 
' — names probably unfamiliar to the general pub- 
lic, but names with which the Police Department 
had " auld acquaintance." Occasionally an editor 
of an anarchist newspaper in Lynn, Massachusetts, 
Gagliani by name, came to speak in the cellar, and 
Plunkett, Harry Kelly, and Alexander Berkman 
were usually to be found In the group. 

The winter of 19 13-19 14 was one of Indus- 
trial depression. Many of the radical labor ele- 
ment rallied to the I. W. W. and the unemployed 
readily joined them. The methods of the anarch- 
ists and I. W. W.'s were similar, and the advo- 



42 THROTTLED 

cates of unrest were enlisted under both standards. 
In the late winter demonstrations began and mul- 
tiplied until in March a youth named Frank Tan- 
nenbaum, to whom Emma Goldman later took a 
fancy, led a mob of I. W. W.'s into St. Alphonsus' 
Church demanding food. The police waited un- 
til they had passed inside, then locked the doors, 
and arrested the whole lot. This was but one 
instance of a number which promised more trouble. 
Whatever nice distinctions of creed separated the 
Industrial Workers from the anarchists were 
paper distinctions; the performances of both bod- 
ies made it fairly plain that if you scratched 
an anarchist you found an I. W. W. under- 
neath. 

There may have been some intimation from 
abroad of the impending war, among the anarch- 
ists, for in July certain of them began to grow 
demonstrative. On Independence Day Mandese 
was arrested in Tarrytown, in uncomfortable 
proximity to the estate and person of John D. 
Rockefeller. Carron, Berg and Hansen, three 
members of the Brescia Circle, were engaged on 
that same day in perfecting a bomb in their rooms 
at Lexington Avenue and 104th Street, when the 
machine exploded prematurely and killed them. 
That bomb had been intended for the Rockefeller 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 43 

family. Naturally everyone with a shred of re- 
spect for order who read of these episodes re« 
colled from them, but it was necessary to judge 
them from the anarchist's own standpoint to see 
that while one of the cases had resulted In death, 
and the Mandese Incident In arrest, both had been 
successful In creating a disturbance. The anarch- 
ist likes disturbance as well as he dislikes order, 
for unrest is contagious, and means new recruits 
to the cause. It became our duty, therefore, to 
make a careful investigation of these disturbances 
at their source, and we insinuated a detective into 
the Brescia Circle itself. 

He spoke only English — a good language for 
social intercourse, but not the key to the affairs 
of the group in the io6th Street basement. 
Whenever the more prominent agitators had a 
really important matter to discuss they used the 
Italian tongue, and it was impossible for our 
man to eavesdrop. Perhaps he was over-eager, 
for twice he was brought to trial by the Circle 
charged with spying. Twice he was acquitted. 
But when his enemies had him formally charged 
a third time with treachery, the anarchists de- 
cided that although they had no evidence against 
him beyond a powerful suspicion, he would be 
better outside. Outside he went. 



^44 THROTTLED 

On October 3, the anarchists gave a grand ball 
at the Harlem Casino in honor of Emma Gold- 
man, and at that affair announcement was made 
that October 13 would be observed by those of the 
cause with a celebration at Forward Hall, in East 
Broadway, fitting to the anniversary of the *' assas- 
sination " of Francisco Ferrer. The orator, 
Leonard Abbott, also reminded the gathering that 
" the Catholic Church had been responsible for 
Ferrer's death." At five o'clock in the afternoon 
of October 12 a vicious explosion occurred in the 
north aisle of St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was an 
anarchist's bomb. The nave of the church held 
numerous worshippers, who were panic-stricken, 
but who fortunately escaped injury with the ex- 
ception of a young man struck in the face by a 
flying splinter from one of the altars. Shortly 
after midnight of the next day a bomb placed In 
the front area of the priests' house of St. Alphon- 
sus' exploded with violence enough to break every 
window in the house and every window in the 
house across the street. Ferrer's ^' assassina- 
tion " had evidently been appropriately observed. 

The situation was disturbing. We had to put 
a stop to bombing before the anarchists grew 
bolder and began to kill someone beside them- 
selves. Of course we wanted all the evidence we 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 45 

could lay hands on, and yet the evidence we had 
been able to obtain had not prevented two out- 
rages. We felt that undoubtedly the best place 
to look for It was still the Brescia Circle, as it 
constituted the chief organization and headquar- 
ters for the element which we believed guilty. 
And we now return to the question of the stool- 
pigeon. 

It would have been possible to employ one of 
the Circle, perhaps. It is certain that I should 
have been uneasy with only his evidence to de- 
pend upon, for a bomb does not wait to be in- 
vestigated. Planting a man In the Brescia Circle 
had not been successful, but I felt that it could 
be made successful. So out of five or six can- 
didates from the department I chose Amedeo 
Pollgnani for the work. 

He was a young Italian detective who kept his 
own counsel, short, strong, mild-mannered and un- 
obtrusive. And he knew Italian. " Your name 
from now on is Frank Baldo," I said. " For- 
get you're a detective. You can get a job over 
in Long Island City, so as to carry out the bluff. 
You are an anarchist. Join the Brescia Circle 
and any other affiliated group, and report to me 
every day. The older members may be suspicious 
of you, and they'll probably follow you, so we had 



46 THROTTLED 

better arrange when you are to telephone and 
I'll let you know whenever and wherever I want 
to see you." We discussed every possible angle 
of the work in order to anticipate and forestall 
whatever accident either of omission or commis- 
sion might occur to make Polignani's position 
suspicious. He was instructed to call me by tele- 
phone at certain hours, using a private number, 
telephoning from a public pay-station in a store in 
which there was not more than one booth, so that 
no one might follow him and hear his conversa- 
tion through the flimsy walls of a booth adjoin- 
ing. He was to deport himself in a retiring man- 
ner, and to throw himself earnestly into the part 
he was to act. I felt sure that his quiet, agreeable 
nature would disarm any suspicion of him as a 
newcomer, and that complete concentration upon 
the spirit of the masquerade would gradually draw 
out important information. First and foremost, 
he was to be on the watch for evidence of the man 
who had committed the two bomb outrages in 
October; secondly, he was to cover the activities 
and intentions of the anarchists in general; thirdly, 
he was to keep his eyes and ears open and his 
mouth shut, and to deal with any emergency which 
might arise. 

It often happens in fiction that a man journeys 




Copyriihl, by International News Service 

Carmine and Carbone in Court 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 47 

to a far country and somewhere on the voyage 
sheds his identity like an old suit of clothes to 
proceed through years of adventure as another 
individual; in the movies it is no feat at all for a 
girl to disguise herself as a man and hoodwink 
the rest of the actors through several hundred 
feet of film; but it remained for a New York de- 
tective to discard his name and his associations 
for six months, and without once stirring outside 
his jurisdiction, without any diguise, and without 
miraculous power, to add to the records — and 
consequently to the efficiency — of his depart- 
ment a store of information of one of the most 
troublesome groups of anarchists in the United 
States. 

He bade his little family in the Bronx good- 
by, got employment at manual labor in a Long 
Island City factory, and hired a cheap room at 
1907 Third Avenue. Throughout November he 
attended meetings of the Brescia Circle, listening 
to bitter speeches full of wild plans to overthrow 
the government, and the organized church, and 
getting the lay of the land. To such members as 
chose to speak to him he was courteous and 
friendly, but they were not many. The more im- 
portant members had a way of gathering in cor- 
ners and whispering to each other, and the new 



48 THROTTLED 

member was not invited to join the charmed innci 
circle. So he held his peace, and memorized 
names and faces, and presently his opportunity^ 
came. 

Pollgnani had noticed on November 30 a young 
Italian cobbler, named Carbone, who seemed to 
have influence In the Circle, and he confirmed this 
judgment on the next two Sunday evenings as 
he saw Carbone in whispered conversation with 
Frank Mandese and one Campanielli. The next 
Sunday night the same trio was in star-chamber 
session when a good-natured wrestling match 
started in another part of the room, and Carbone 
turned to watch it Pollgnani was tossing vari- 
ous members to the floor, and as he was smooth- 
ing his ruffled hair after a short bout, Carbone 
tapped him on the shoulder and said, " You're a 
strong fellow — Tm glad to see you a member of 
the Brescia Circle!" The detective smiled, and 
the two fell Into conversation, which continued as 
they left the society's rooms and strolled up Third 
Avenue. 

" The trouble with those fellows," said Car- 
bone, " is that they talk too much and don't act 
enough. They don't accomplish anything." 

*' That's right," Pollgnani agreed. 

*' What they ought to do is throw a few bombs 



PLAYING WITH FIRE ^.9 

and show the police something/' Carbonc con- 
tinued. " Wake them up ! Look — " he held up 
the stumps of five fingers of his right hand — *' I 
got that making a bomb. Some day I'll show you 
how to make 'em." 

That arrangement suited Polignani perfectly. 
He had a lead, after tedious " watchful waiting," 
which had been punctuated by the explosion of a 
mysterious bomb at the door of the Bronx County 
Court House on November 11. He had listened 
to reams of oratory against the ruling classes, 
law, order and the churches, had heard his fellow 
members chided because the bombs at St. Patrick's 
and St. Alphonsus' had been too weak, and had 
heard speakers advise any members who con- 
templated the use of dynamite not to take too 
many people into their confidences. Carbone was 
deliberately confiding in " Baldo," and the de- 
tective made up his mind to cultivate him. 

This extract from his notebook will illustrate 
how the acquaintance ripened: 

** I did not see Carbone again until Sunday the 
27th. On this day he spoke to me of a friend 
named Frank and said that if all anarchists were 
like his friend they would be all right. He 
thinks nothing of making and throwing a bomb. 
On January ist about 1.4^ P.M. Carbone met 
me as per appointment. We went to where the 



Sp THROTTLED 

meeting ot the unemployed was being held and 
both of us shook hands with Louise Berg, Man- 
dese, and Bianco. . . . He introduced me to his 
friend Frank. . . .'* 

Enter the third conspirator, Frank Abarno, 25 
years old, and a native of San Velle, Italy. Al- 
most on the heels of his introduction to the promis- 
ing new member, the new member began to take 
a new interest in life, for on January 3 Car- 
bone drew Polignani out of the meeting after the 
speeches and said quietly, " Come on up to the 
125th Street Station. It's warm up there, and 
we won't be bothered. I'll tell you something 
about making bombs." And on the way up Lex- 
ington Avenue Carbone explained that he needed 
some caps about two inches long. All the dyna- 
mite he wanted he could get from his uncle, a con- 
tractor *' out In the country." " We'll get som.e 
dynamite, and then you and Frank and me will 
blow up some churches, see? " 

" Sure," the detective answered. " What 
church? " 

" St. Patrick's is the best. This time it'll be a 
good one too — not like before." 

" Did you hear what Mandese was saying the 
other night? " Polignani asked. " He was scrap- 
ping with another fellow and the fellow says, ' If 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 51 

they wouldn't give me no work I'd throw bombs.' 
And Mandese said to him, ' The only kind of 
bombs you shoot are the kind you shoot with your 
mouth,' and he says, ' What kind of bombs do 
you shoot then? ' And Mandese says, ' The kind 
that went off at Madison Square and the two 
churches, see ! ' " 

Carbone apparently did not care for the re- 
sults of the previous explosions, for he said: 

" Well, they were no good. That bomb that 
killed Carron and Berg and Hansen wasn't made 
right. It was wound too tight — that's why it 
went off too soon. I can make a bomb from a 
brass ball off a bed-post that will start some- 
thing." 

A fortnight passed, and Carbone turned up at 
the Brescia meeting-place In company with Abarno. 
They beckoned to PolignanI and the three walked 
down Third Avenue, Abarno mouthing anarchy, 
and suddenly suggesting that he would like to 
go Into St. Patrick's, find Cardinal Farley alone, 
and choke him to death. The gentle soul then 
remarked: " Carbone, you make some bombs! " 

" If I can get those caps I'll make a bomb that 
will destroy the Cathedral clear down to the 
ground, but If I can't get the caps then I'll have to 
make the other kind." 



52 THROTTLED 

^' Well, you make two bombs," said Abarno. 
" We'll set them off on the outside of the church 
about six o'clock some morning and then we can 
get away clean and get to work on time and no- 
body will know the difference." 

Carbone asked Abarno to get him some sulphur, 
and turned to Pollgnani a slip pencilled, " Col- 
lorate di Potase, i lb." and " Andimonio." 
" You get that at a drug store, Baldo," he said. 

" Baldo " complied, and a few weeks later the 
materials were assembled. Carbone Instructed 
Pollgnani to call on Abarno for a booklet on 
bomb manufacture, and about six In the evening of 
February 4 Abarno gave the detective the 
pamphlet to read while he went out to get some 
spaghetti, as the two had an appointment with 
Carbone at 7.30. Pollgnani was hardly out of 
Abarno's sight when he sprinted to a telephone 
and called me. I met him at once, at head- 
quarters, and turned the booklet over to the pho- 
tographer, who got to work Immediately pho- 
tographing the pages. Our time was short, and 
before we had the job done I had to restore the 
book to Pollgnani. On Lincoln's Birthday Car- 
bone gave the book to our man again, to study, and 
this gave us time to finish the photographic copy- 
ing. 



ISTRUMENTI 

"Una bilancia usata L. 8. — 

XJn termometro ; ,, 2.50 

Misure . . . ,, 3- — 

Matracci di vetro , 6. — 

Tre iinbuti di vetro e tre bacchette 

di vetro ,, 2. — 

Lainpada a spirito ,, 1. — 

Un mastello di legno di 300 35 litri ,, 3. — 

Spese varie e irnpreviste 20.50 

TOTALE L. 46.— 

Racconiandiaino a colore che si vogliono 
mettere a questi lavon, di procurarsi prima 
di tutto il denaro necessario; altrimtnti arri- 
schiano di doversi fermare a niezza strada, 
di tirar le cose in lungo ed esporsi inutilmente. 

Raccomandiamo agli stessi di non trascu- 
rare nessuna delle precauzioni necessarie per 
non attirare I'attenzione della polizia, di non 
mettersi in vista colla propaganda pubblica, 
di non farsi vedere coi conipagni conosciuti, 
e di non lavorare mai nelle case soggette ad 
€ssere perquisite. 

Sopratutto raccomandiamo non mettersi a 
fabbricare esplosivi per il gusto di fabbricarli. 
Tutto ci6 che si pu6 avere bello e fatto, e 
inutile, e stupido il volerlo fare da se, quando 
non si ha la pratica ed i mezzi che hanno 
quelli del mestiere. Nei posti in cui si pu6 
avere la dinamite — e oggi la si pu6 avere 
quasi dappertutto — perch^ mettersi a fab- 
bricarla? 

Bisogna poi che fra i d;versi esplosivi, le 
diverse bombe, ecc. , ognuno scelga le cose 
che per lui sono piii facili e piu pratiche ri- 
cordandosi sempre che: E' meglio una cosa 
piccola f&tta, che una grande restata in 
proposito. 

— 13 — 



.ste.ssa: si legano bene con fil di ferro intorno 
alia rotaia, si niette capsula e miccia, si co- 
pre con terra e la mina e pronta. Quesla 
produce una rottura di mezzo metro Per 
avere rotture piu estese non v'e che prepa- 
rare parecchie di queste mine, a debita di- 
stanza e munirle di miccie di eguali qualiti 
e lunghezza; e raccogliere insieme i capi delle 
miccie,- in inodo che dando f uc^o alle miccie 
lo scoppio e contemporaneo in tutti i punti. 
Spesso h vantaggioso per far saltare gli scam- 
Bii, cioe i punti dove s'incrociano diverse 
linee. Per mettere fuori d'uso una locouio- 
tiva o una macchina a vapore qualsiasi, ba- 
sta far scoppiare 3 o 4 petardi in un tube 
intemo della caldaia. 

BOMBE 

Sono recipienti di metallo pieni di materia 
esplosiva, che scoppiando si rompono in pezzi 
e feriscono i circostanti. Possono avere qua- 
lunque forma, ma la sferica e piu efficace. 
Per farle .scoppiare si pu6 adoperare una cap- 
sula con miccia che brucia rapidissimamente 
tanto da aver giusto il tempo per accenderle 
e lanciarle. Si puo anche applicarv i tutto a 
r intorno dei luminelli con capsuft o altri ap- 
parati, in modp che per I'urto della caduta il 
fulminato scoppi e faccia scoppiare la carica 
della bomba, come in quelle all'Orsini. 

La bomba fa tanto piu effetto quanto piu 
il metallo e resistente, sempre che la carica 
abbia la forza di farla scoppiare. Quindi il 
miglior metallo e il ferro o I'acciaio, poi il 
rame, I'ottone, il bronzo, quindi la ghisa ed 
infine lo zinco solo o legato con stagno; il 
piombo non serve. Lo spessore delle pa- 
— 59 — 



Pages from the bomb-thrower's textbook 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 53 

I realized when I saw the translation how Car- 
bone knew so much about making bombs. 

"La Salute e' in voi ! " read the cover, or 
"Health is in you! " Evidently a toast to the 
brotherhood for which it was prepared. It was 
a pamphlet of some sixty pages, measuring about 
four by eight inches, and cleanly printed in Ital- 
ian. It was nothing less than a text-book on how 
to go about making bombs — a sort of guide to 
anarchist etiquette. It would be unwise to re- 
produce its instructions here in detail, as they 
were too accurate for the general peace, but the 
index which follows will give a conception of the 
thoroughness with which the anonymous writers 
in far-off Italy covered their subject. 

"Index — 

First principles I 

Instruments 7 

Manipulation . 8' 

Explosive material 11 

Powder 14 

Nitroglycerine 14 

Dynamite . 1 20 

Fulminate of mercury 23 

Gun cotton . 27 

Preparation of fuses ......... 31 

Capsule and petard 34 

Application of explosive mate- 
rials , '. . 35 



54 THROTTLED 

Bombs 39 

Incendiary materials 44 " 

Yes, it was accurate — and very practical. To 
quote from its advice to struggling anarchists : 

*' We recommend most earnestly that if you 
wish to engage in this line of work, you procure, 
before all else, a sufficient amount of money, 
otherwise you risk being put out in the middle of 
the street, only to find your long work and trouble 
all in vain. We recommend at the same time 
that you do not omit any precaution necessary 
to avoid attracting the attention of the poHce, 
and avoid mixing with the public, nor be seen with 
known companions. And do not work at it in 
the house except v/hen necessary. . . . 

" The work should be done in a well ventilated 
room provided with a good chimney place and 
furnished in such a way that you can hide things 
if anyone enters, and this room ought to be on the 
top floor of the house on account of the odors 
that are always being produced. . . . 

*' Above all we recommend that you never make 
explosives for the mere pleasure of making them. 
All you do beyond enough is useless and stupid 
— especially so when you have neither the prac- 
tice nor the proper means for making them. As 
to the place to keep the dynamite, why make it 
until it is needed? Take heed that among the 
various kinds of explosives, bombs, etc., always 
choose the one that will be most easily used and 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 55 

most practical, remembering always that It Is 
better to do a little thing well than to leave a big 
thing half done. . . ." 

The little booklet contained a list of the neces- 
sary tools with their estimated costs, and said of 
the chemicals to be used, " The materials to be 
employed should be sufficiently pure. They may 
be had of dealers in chemical and pharmaceutical 
products, and it is well not to buy all the stuff from 
the same merchant. In order that he may not 
know what you wish to make. . . ." It explained 
the relative forces of explosives in this way: 
*' The relative force which the various explosives 
have Is as follows : Shot-gun powder has a force 
of I ; an equal amount of ' Panclastite ' has the 
force of 6; of dynamite 7; of dry gun-cotton 9 
(If with 50% of salts of nitre, 5) ; of nitroglycer- 
ine 9; of fulminate of mercury 10 or 3>4; of 
nitromannlte 11. . . . All the other explosives of 
which we speak, such as melenite, etc., have ni- 
troglycerine for their bases, therefore have no 
greater force than that of nitroglycerine.'* 

After an exposition of the method of making 
nitroglycerine — the mere reading of which would 
make your hair bristle — the compilers conclude 
". . . It is not very dangerous to use when cold, 
notwithstanding all that has been said. It would 



56 THROTTLED 

be a great work if some American manufacturer 
would devise some means of congealing it so that 
it would be less sensitive to shock, so that it 
might safely be carried on the railways." Of 
fulminating cotton they remark, " As it ignites 
with instantaneous rapidity it is best to use a fuse 
that burns the most quickly; for example, when 
for use in bombs made to throw at a person, it 
will be enough to twist the cord, etc., etc." Mi- 
nute directions are given for the home-laboratory 
manufacture of the explosives listed, and the 
experimenter who cared to attempt their manu- 
facture was warned in the simplest and most 
emphatic terms of the caprices of the different 
materials. He was told how to make cord-fuses 
that would burn at the rate of 8 hours to the 
yard, and of 6 hours to the yard; paper fuses 
which would reach the explosive two hours after 
a spark had touched the corner of a sheet of 
prepared paper; thread fuses which would sparkle 
fifteen seconds to the metre, or three minutes to 
the metre; and, finally, an instantaneous fuse 
which " Because it will burn with all the speed of 
electricity . . . may be made to serve many im- 
portant purposes: to fire a mine under a passing 
train, under gatherings, or troops of cavalry." 
If the bomber wished to blow up a wall, he 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 57 

was told how to compute by simple mathematics 
the quantity of explosive required. A bridge 
*' win require twice the charge needed for a wall '* 

— and the vulnerable points of the bridge were 
indicated. Telephone and telegraph poles and 
wires, street gratings, street railways, locomo- 
tives, steam-boilers, all came In for their share 
of attention. " It Is very easy to find suitable 
receptacles for bombs," the writer went on. 
*' For example, large inkwells, brass handles such 
as are used on letter-presses. . . . For certain 
purposes a bottle may be made to serve as a bomb 

— they are suitable for throwing from a window. 
. . . Fragile glass bottles when filled with this 
solution (an incendiary mixture) make handy 
incendiary bombs to hurl among troops, official 
gatherings, etc.; also to pour from windows upon 
troops, or to throw from a drinking glass or 
pail. ..." I have wondered whether Gavrio 
Prinzip of Sarajevo ever saw this book, and 
whether it may not have been translated into Ital- 
ian from the original German. 

Mere possession of this wicked treatise would 
suggest that the owner was up to no good, espe- 
cially if the owner, as in this case, was known to 
be a volatile member of an anarchistic circle who 
had already declared his intentions of wrecking 



58 THROTTLED 

something. It was reasonable to assume that 
there must be such a book of instruction in ex- 
istence, that the bombers had not been handling 
delicate explosives with no better knowledge than 
word-of-mouth, hearsay chemistry, but I am free 
to confess that my first sight of the pamphlet 
brought the plots of the men we were watching 
very close to grim reality. I never knew just 
when we would get an ambulance call and have 
to go and pick Polignani out of the wreck of 
a premature explosion, and I never heard him 
report in on the telephone that I didn't experi- 
ence a momentary apprehension of his latest news. 
The detective himself was calm enough, and en- 
thusiastic over the fact that the trail was grow- 
ing hotter all the time. The question of evidence 
of the previous explosions was in the background 
now, and the activities of the Brescia Circle as a 
political unit did not concern us nearly as much 
as the activities of three of its members with their 
" andimonio, collorate di potase " and their 
pamphlet, and their hatred of the Catholic 
Church. 

Polignani had seen this hatred demonstrated 
many times by Carbone. They passed two Sis- 
ters of Charity one chilly evening near the Harlem 
station, and the anarchist spat, and cursed them. 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 59 

So the detective was not surprised by Abarno's 
proposal on the night of St. Valentine's Day that 
the three conspirators plant their bombs in St. 
Patrick's Cathedral. '' We'll go over there some 
day soon and look for a good place to set them. 
And then we'll plant the bomb on some good 
holiday — say on March 21, eh?" 

"What's that day?" Polignani inquired. 

"The Commune!" Abarno answered. 

Polignani bought the antimony and the chlorate 
of potash, and at a subsequent meeting watched 
uneasily while Carbone tried to pulverize the anti- 
mony with a hammer. It was too hard work, 
however, and " Baldo " was directed to buy a 
small quantity of the pulverized substance. This 
he did. The three had meanwhile been trying 
to pick out a good room in an English-speaking 
lodging house in 29th Street, but finally gave it 
up and hired a furnished room at 1341 Third 
Avenue. There they brought their materials, con- 
sisting of twelve yards of copper wire, a trunk 
full of odds and ends, tools, fuse cord, and vari- 
ous Ingredients. To this supply they wanted to 
add some hollow iron balls, but the hollow iron 
ball market was sparse, and they finally substi- 
tuted three tin hand-soap cans. On February 27 
Polignani and Abarno made a tour of inspection 



6o THROTTLED 

of St. Patrick's, and as they were descending the 
steps Abarno remarked that when he had de- 
stroyed the Cathedral they would turn their at- 
tention first to the Carnegie residence at 90th 
Street and Fifth Avenue, and then to the Rocke- 
feller home. "We won't wait till March 21," 
he observed impatiently. " Let's get this job 
done soon. Say Tuesday morning." 

High noon of the following day saw the three 
plotters cheerfully at work in the furnished room. 
Abarno and Carbone measured carefully the pro- 
portions of sulphur, sugar, chlorate of potash and 
antimony; Carbone filled the tins v/ith the mixture, 
and led the fuses into the heart of the mass, 
glancing up from time to time to the detective 
with real pride, as if to say: "See, Baldo? 
That's how an expert works!" "Baldo" had 
contributed his share of the materials — a few 
lengths of iron rod. Carbone bound these to the 
outside of the cans with cord, and added a few 
bolts which he found In a bureau drawer, and a 
coat-hanger, twisted out of shape. Round and 
round this shapeless tangle of metal he wove 
copper wire, and so produced two heavy, compact 
bombs. Pollgnani had grown almost gray when, 
after boring the fuse holes In the can-tops, Car- 
bone casually picked up a hammer and began to 



To 



?.*i^ 














jiS^^t^i^^ ^::^ii-i^"^fi^^^^''f^<.^^ 



A postcard received by Commissioner Woods after the arrest 

of the Anarchists 

The message reads : 

" Mr. Woods 
My Dear Sir 

Your police Espionage may go as far as you like for the promotion of 
your Bankrupt Law & Order of Society. The Anarchists of New York 
have but one Life to give for the Ideal of Humanity and absolute Freedom 
of mankind the world over, yours The Society for the Propagation of 
absolute Liberty and Human Freedom. . ." 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 6i 

tattoo the cans. The detective promptly took 
refuge behind the bed, near the floor. 

" No use to hide there, Baldo ! " This with a 
laugh from Carbone. " If she goes off she'll blow 
the whole house down. How's that, Frank? " 
he added, showing the finished product to Abarno. 

" I'll throw that one and you can throw the 
other, Carbone," Abarno said. " Now listen. 
We will meet here Tuesday morning at six o'clock 
to the minute. We will get to the Cathedral just 
at 6.20. Then we'll light the bombs, and the fuses 
will burn slow for twenty minutes, so as we can 
get over to the Madison Avenue car and then we 
can all get to work on time, and we will have a 
good alibi all right. Then we'll get together 
Tuesday night and go some place and have a good 
time to celebrate throwing a scare Into Fifth 
Avenue, boys I Tuesday morning, six o'clock 
sharp? " 

Carbone and Polignani assented, and Abarno 
left. 

Polignani kept in close touch with me from 
that moment forward. Ever since the day when 
Carbone had sent him to the drug store for black 
antimony, with Instructions to bribe the drug clerk 
if he could not easily obtain it, we had had a 
double check on the conspirators, for I had as- 



62 THROTTLED 

signed two men to shadow them constantly. The 
case was building towards a climax. Polignani 
had shrewdly kept the slip on which Carbone 
wrote the prescription for the explosives, and when 
Carbone asked where it was he said, " I tore it 
up. I didn't want it to be found on me. It 
would get me into trouble." The anarchist 
praised the detective for his forethought. The 
two men from the Bomb Squad never let Abarno 
and Carbone out of their sight, so that for a 
month we had not only the direct evidence of 
Polignani of what the conspirators said and did 
in his presence, but evidence from the two shadows 
which accounted for their time more fully, prob- 
ably, than they could have recalled themselves. 
And so when Polignani — who did not know he 
was being observed — told me of the final plans, 
I passed the information on to the two shadows, 
and we formulated a counter-campaign for Tues- 
day morning. 

Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, Polignani 
tumbled out of bed and into his clothes. He ate 
a hasty and nervous breakfast at a cheap lunch- 
room around the corner, and hurried to the side- 
walk before 1341 Third Avenue, arriving a 
few minutes after six. Abarno joined him at 
6.30. 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 63 

"Where's Carbone — isn't he here?" he said 
by way of greeting. 

*'No," replied " Baldo." 

" Well, we can't wait for him. We can't lose 
any time. I got to be at work at 7.30. Come up 
and get the bombs with me. We'll probably meet 
him on the way down the street. Or maybe he's 
at the shoe-shop." 

The two men went upstairs and Into the third- 
floor-back. " Give me the key," Abarno mut- 
tered. Pollgnani did so. Abarno opened the 
trunk and took out the two bombs. " You take 
one and I'll take the other," he whispered. 
*' Come on. Put It under your coat." 

When they started down Third Avenue the 
two shadows — who had also risen early — disen- 
gaged themselves from the doorways where they 
were idling and proceeded at an even pace down 
the Avenue behind the men. A few hundred 
yards or so In the rear of the procession was a 
limousine, and I was in the limousine. I could 
spot the men distinctly, and I had to chuckle when 
I saw them catch sight of a uniformed officer a 
block or so ahead and hastily cross the street. 
The same thing occurred twice again in the course 
of the march. Our parade continued. No one 
but ourselves paid any attention to the two labor- 



64 THROTTLED 

ers who were carrying lumpy bundles under their 
coats. 

At Fifty-third Street my chauffeur turned west 
and slipped into high speed. We were at the 
Cathedral in a minute more, and I jumped out and 
hurried into the vestibule. No one there but three 
or four scrub-women, puttering around in the half- 
light with their mops and pails. Several hundred 
worshippers were already gathered in the front of 
the nave, where Bishop Hayes was conducting 
early mass. As I passed into the body of the 
church there was no one near except an elderly 
usher, with white hair and beard. I stepped into 
a dark corner and waited. 

A matter of two or three minutes passed, though 
it seemed much longer. Then I saw Abarno and 
Polignani enter the vestibule, cross it and enter 
the church itself, taking their cigars out of their 
mouths as they turned towards the north aisle. 
Abarno led the way. At the tenth pew he mo- 
tioned to Polignani to sit there, and Polignani 
obeyed, dropping to his knees in prayer. Abarno 
continued to the sixth pew ahead. Two of the 
scrub-women had deserted their mops, and were 
dusting the pews along the north aisle near the 
newcomers. Abarno rested for a moment in his 
pew, with his head and body bent as if in prayer, 




1. Detective George D. Bamitz 2. Detective Patrick Walsh 

3. Detective James Sterett 
4. Left to right : Patrick Walsh, Jerome Murphy and James Sterett 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 6s 

then rose and rejoined Pollgnanl. Again he rose, 
and this time moved toward the north end of the 
altar, where he crouched for several seconds, plac- 
ing his bomb against a great pillar. With his 
other hand he flicked the ashes from the coal of 
his cigar and touched the glowing end to the 
fuse. He had taken perhaps three steps down 
the aisle again when the scrub-woman stopped 
plying her dust-cloth. She fastened an iron grip 
on Abarno's arms and hustled him down the 
aisle so swiftly that no one remarked the affair. 
The scrub-woman was Detective Walsh, disguised. 
The elderly usher passed the two and hurried to 
the spot where Abarno had crouched by the pillar. 
He saw the lighted fuse and pinched it out with 
his fingers. The elderly usher, underneath his 
makeup, was Lieutenant Barnitz. Polignani was 
promptly placed under arrest and led to the vesti- 
bule with Abarno — for the evidence was not yet 
all in. 

Abarno immediately suspected Carbone of 
treachery. He protested violently that the 
missing conspirator had instigated the whole af- 
fair, that it was his idea, that he had made the 
bombs, and that he could be found living with a 
Hungarian-Jewish family on the fourth floor of 
a house at 216 East 67th Street. He was fluent 



66 THROTTLED 

in the accusations he made against Carbone, and 
he grew more fluent as he recovered from the 
fright of his arrest. So while we escorted the 
two bombs and the two prisoners to headquarters, 
other members of the Bomb Squad visited Carbone 
and placed him under arrest. 

From them at headquarters we verified the 
story as we already knew it. Each man accused 
the other. Both men exonerated Polignani of 
any part in suggesting the plot or in making the 
bombs for several days after their arrest. But 
Polignani's true identity could not be unknown to 
them indefinitely, of course, and when they found 
out that they had been confiding in a full-fledged 
detective — ah, then the storm broke I Prompted, 
I suspect, by pseudo-legal advice, they cried 
" Frame-up ! " until they grew hoarse, but it was 
too late, for in the possession of Assistant Dis- 
trict Attorney Arthur Train was already a sworn 
statement which fixed their guilt by their own 
confession. 

The anarchists rushed to their rescue, but their 
efforts were chiefly verbal. At the Brescia Circle, 
and at I. W. W. headquarters at 64 East 4th 
Street, it was common gossip that counsel for the 
defendants were going to supply 45 or 50 wit- 
nesses to swear that Polignani had invited them to 




1. The Dagger Threat to Polignani 

2. The Black Hand Threat 3. Frank Abarno 

4. Carmine Carbone 



PLAYING WITH FIRE 67 

make bombs. This I had enjoined him strictly 
not to do, as a newcomer who talks bombs is a 
suspicious character in anarchist circles. 1 know 
he obeyed. There was organized a " Carbone ed 
Abarno Defence Committee " with headquarters 
at 2205 Third Avenue, which solicited other neigh- 
boring Italian clubs with anarchistic tendencies 
for support of the two. Polignani's photograph 
appeared presently in a New York Italian news- 
paper with this caption: 

*' The filthy carrion who by order of the Police 
of New York devised the bomb plot which led up 
to the arrest of Abarno and Carbone, now before 
the Courts. All of us comrades will keep this in 
mind." 

He received several threatening anonymous let- 
ters, some bearing the familiar " black hand," 
others sketching on newspaper photographs of 
him the point in his anatomy at which he might 
expect to feel the dagger of revenge; others mere 
bombastic defiance. (The anonymous letter- 
writer is very often a courageous soul who spells 
out his messages with letters and words clipped 
from newspapers, so that his handwriting will 
not betray him.) 

What was the reward of those five months in- 
vested in patience? The two prisoners con- 



68 THROTTLED 

victed and sentenced to terms of from six to twelve 
years, was one result. But a far greater one was 
a sharp decrease in bomb-throwing in New York, 
and perhaps the most gratifying was the discord 
which grew in the Brescia Circle. The group 
was frightened, and the members began to sus- 
pect each other of espionage. One former 
anarchist was quoted as saying that he wouldn't 
even trust himself — he had been dreaming the 
night before that he was a spy. The Brescia 
Circle became disorganized, and several other 
similar groups in the city suffered the same fate. 
Their leaders drifted away — and got into more 
trouble, as we shall see later. 

We never found the original of the treatise on 
bombs. Carbone said he had destroyed it. But 
there are probably other copies from the same 
press in the hands of accredited bomb-throwers. 
If not, they may apply to the New York police 
department. 



IV 

THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 

Bret Harte said that '' the heathen Chinee '* 
was peculiar. The British have learned long 
since that the Hindu, being an Oriental, cannot 
help being equally " peculiar," and it is a great 
tribute to British persistence that it has labored 
so hard and so successfully in the good govern- 
ment of a people so temperamentally complex. 
They have studied the Hindu, and have under- 
stood him as well as may be. Understanding 
him they have watched him. When war broke 
out, this great Oriental empire presented to 
Britain a grave problem, for as a Hindu editor 
in the United States phrased it, " England is 
Germany's enemy. England is our enemy. Our 
enemy's enemy is our friend." 

It is not in my intention or power to discuss the 
methods which England employed to maintain 
strict loyalty in the Indian peninsula, but to out- 
line here the part we played in uncovering a plot 

69 



70 THROTTLED 

which threatened seriously to complicate her ef- 
forts around on the other side of the earth. 

Scotland Yard told us in February, 19 17, that 
Hindus were conspiring in bomb plots with cer- 
tain Germans in the United States. If it was 
true, it was against the laws of our country. They 
supplied us with a few names, but tactfully sug- 
gested that inasmuch as it was our country and 
our laws which the plotters were attempting to 
disturb, we would prefer to develop the case 
ourselves. Various authorities in this country had 
already .had strong suspicions of the British 
claims, but as yet those suspicions had not grown 
to proof of any specific act. So we went to 
work. 

Among other names which were furnished us 
was that of one Chakravarty, whose address was 
364 West 1 20th Street, New York. For more 
than a fortnight men of the Bomb Squad under 
Mr. (now Lieut.-Col.) Nicholas Biddle, as spe- 
cial aid to the commissioner, watched that house. 
They hired a room opposite, where through a 
slit in the window shade they could keep the door- 
way under observation. At the hours when work- 
ing New York leaves its home to make money, 
and comes home at night having made it, the 
door was rarely used, but sometimes at mid- 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 71 

forenoon, sometimes in the small hours of the 
morning, the men on watch saw several dark- 
skinned individuals pass in and out of the house. 
The building itself gave no sign of suspicious ac- 
tivity. We were on the brink of war, and as 
was the case in most of the other houses in the 
block, an American flag hung draped in the front 
window. What went on behind the camouflage 
screen we did not know. Now and then our men, 
hiding in the shadow of the areaway, would go 
quietly up Into the dark doorway and listen, but 
the house never gave out a sound. There was 
certainly no indication that these Hindus were 
conspiring with the Imperial German Government 
in dynamite plots. 

We knew certain East Indians who could be de- 
pended upon, and told them to call upon Chak- 
ravarty. This ruse failed because Chakravarty 
never presented to the callers anything but a guile- 
less reception. So far as they could learn his 
occupation was that of manufacturer of pills; he 
and a certain Ernest Sekunna constituted the Omin 
Company, which company packed in aluminum 
boxes and sold to a limited clientele pills which 
like most patent remedies were recommended for 
any ailment from indigestion up or down — if 
the pill sold, then it was a success. This news did 



72 THROTTLED 

not quiet our impatience, and we decided on a 
raid. 

On the night of March 7, 19 17, Detectives 
Barnitz, Coy, Randolph, Murphy, Jenkins, Walsh, 
Sterett and Fenelly called at the house, Sterett, 
pretending to be a messenger, and carrying a 
dummy package, presenting himself at the front 
door, and the rest of the party covering other 
avenues of escape. The portal was opened by a 
little Hindu who looked up innocently to Sterett 
and said that Dr. Chakravarty was not in — he 
had gone to Boston. The detectives announced 
their intention of searching the house. The little 
man protested, and was given certain short rea- 
sons why the search was in order. Surprise, in- 
jured innocence, and irritation crossed his olive- 
drab face, and he announced that he was a patri- 
otic American and that he had never done anything 
to break the laws of the United States. If we 
wanted Dr. Chakravarty, he said, we should go 
and get him, and not disturb a peaceful household 
in this way, and he added that Chakravarty had 
left for New England months before, leaving no 
address. In this the little Hindu was borne out 
by the answers which the other occupant of the 
house gave to our questions — this was Sekunna, a 
German of thirty-five or so. We searched the 



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THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 75 

house, and took the two prisoners and considerable 
material to headquarters. 

The search disclosed a supply of literature of 
the Omin Company describing the properties of 
its pills, a photograph of Sekunna and Chakra- 
varty as the turbaned benefactors of an unhealthy 
world, and a number of express money-order re- 
ceipts, deeds and a bank book which showed the 
missing Chakravarty to be one who had acquired 
a good deal of money during the past two years. 
The photograph on closer inspection revealed that 
the little prisoner was Dr. Chakravarty himself. 
Sekunna verified this, and Chakravarty, con- 
fronted by it, admitted it. 

We asked the prisoner how he had suddenly 
come by the $60,000 which his books showed. 
He said that it was his inheritance from the 
estate of his grandfather in India, and that no 
less a personage than Rabindranath Tagore, the 
Indian poet, had paid him, in December, 19 16, 
$25,000 of the $45,000 due from the estate. 
About $35,000 had been given him, he added, by 
a lawyer named Chatterji, from Pegu, Burma, in 
March, 1916. 

So far as he gave us his history, it related 
that he had graduated from the University of 
Calcutta, and had lived for a time in London, and 



74 THROTTLED 

later In Paris, before coming to the United States. 
He had heard that there was a warrant out for 
his arrest in India for sedition, probably due, he 
suggested, to his having written several articles 
on the subject of British Rule. 

"Have you been to Germany recently?" I 
asked. 

" Of course not," he answered. " How could 
I get there, with the British watching for me? 
They would arrest me If 1 tried to go. Why do 
you ask that? " 

" Because I wanted to know," I answered. I 
had good reason to believe that he had been there 
because among his effects we found several ex- 
hibits which pointed toward such a trip. A letter 
from a woman in Florida dated December 13, 
1915, said: 

*' I would never for one moment try to deter 
you from the effort or achievement of your lofty 
ideals and noble aims, for in this as in many other 
things my spirit accords with yours. Brother 
dear, do nothing, say nothing, trust nobody, with- 
out extreme caution. God speed you. God 
hasten your return to those who are Interested In 
you, and In all In which you are interested. Bless 
you, precious brother." 

This indicated a journey, clearly. A cablegram 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 75 

dated Bergen, Norway, Dec. 23, 19 15, addressed 
to Sekunna, read, " Safe arrival here," and took 
him as far as the Continent, at least. Three post- 
cards supplied the rest of the Information; they 
were addressed by Sekunna to himself at a Berlin 
address, and bore the Instructions, '' Return to 
Sender, E. A. Sekunna, Omin Company, 417 E. 
142nd Street, New York City "; postmarked Ber- 
lin in December and January, they suggested 
that Chakravarty had used them as part of a 
pre-arranged system of communication with 
America in which he did not wish his own name 
used. 

I found among the papers a photographic print 
of Chakravarty wearing a fez, which I knew was 
not an orthodox head-dress for a Bengalese. 
Furthermore, it struck me that the print was of 
the size and finish usually used on passports for 
Identification of the bearer. I showed it to him, 
with the remark: 

" Why do you tell me you haven't been in Ber- 
lin, when you used this photograph so you could 
get a passport as a Persian? " 

He bit. " I see you got me," he replied. *' I 
lied to you. I want to tell you a different story 
— the real one. I did go to Germany." 

"Why?" 



76 THROTTLED 

" To see Wesendonck. He is a secretary for 
India of the German foreign office. He wanted 
to make plans for propaganda for the liberation 
of India from British rule." 

Chakravarty sat there and unfolded an amaz- 
ing story. He touched gingerly upon his own 
part in it at first, then evidently sensed the fact 
that there were others in the plot guilty of per- 
haps no less reprehensible but more violent 
crimes, and the little doctor's capture and con- 
fession not only gave clues to the authorities 
which enabled them to follow up the outstanding 
German-Hindu plots in America, but developed 
prosecutions of the first magnitude and the keen- 
est general interest. 

The enterprises must be recounted out of their 
actual sequence. The first he claimed to have had 
little part in — the project of an uprising in India 
which Its sponsors hoped would repeat the Mutiny 
of 1857 — but v/ith a more successful outcome. 
Captain Hans Tauscher, the New York agent of 
the Krupp steel and munitions works, was in Ber- 
lin when war broke out. He reported for active 
duty to Captain von Papen, In New York, as soon 
as he could cross the Atlantic, and one of his 
earliest services was the purchase of a large quan- 
tity of rifles, field guns, swords and cartridges, 




1. Franz Schulenberg 2. Ram Chandra 

3. Ram Singh (on the left) 

4. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty and Dr. Ernest Sekunna 

5. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty in his Persian Dress 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 77 

which he stored in 200 West Houston Street, New 
York. On January 9, 191 5, he shipped a train- 
load of arms and ammunition to San Diego, Cali- 
fornia. There it was loaded Into a little vessel, 
the Annie Larsen, which had been chartered by 
German interests, and the Annie Larsen put to 
sea, ostensibly for Mexico, where revolutionary 
arms were In demand. Her real destination was 
a rendezvous off Socorro Island with the Maver- 
ick, a tank-ship which had been bought In San 
Francisco with German money. The Maverick 
was to trans-ship the arms, flood them with oil In 
her cargo tanks In case she might be searched, and 
proceed by way of Batavia and Bangkok to Kar- 
achi, a seaport In India which is the gateway to 
the Punjab. There she would be met by friendly 
fishing vessels who would land her cargo, and if 
all went well, there would be a massacre of the 
garrison of Karachi, and hell would break loose 
over India. The effect of such an uprising upon 
Great Britain's sorely tried military condition of 
early 19 15 would have been incalculable. The 
native troops In France who were helping to stop 
the breach until England's great armies could be 
trained would have to be recalled, the semi-loyal 
tribes would have seen their opportunity, Germany 
would hardly have hesitated to throw a Turkish 



78 , THROTTLED 

force at the northern passes, and altogether it 
would not have been pleasant for the integrity of 
the British Empire. 

The Maverick and the Annie Larsen missed 
connections at Socorro. The Annie Larsen wan- 
dered about the Pacific for some weeks and eventu- 
ally put into Hoquiam, Washington, where the 
United States seized the arms. The Maverick 
blundered from Socorro to San Diego, to HIlo, 
Hawaii, to Anjer, Java, by way of Johnson Island, 
then to Batavia, Java, where she was received 
with disappointment by a German agent and 
where she was finally sold. The filibuster ended 
in flat and costly failure : the arms cost not less 
than $100,000 and probably $150,000, the freight 
to the Pacific Coast some $12,000, the charter of 
the Annie Larsen $19,000, the purchase of the 
Maverick involved hundreds of thousands, not to 
mention the individual fees of the numerous agents 
employed. 

We knew in a general way of this plot, though 
It remained for the tireless efforts of United 
States District Attorney John W. Preston in San 
Francisco to unearth the details. In a raid which 
had been made on the office of Wolf von Igel, 
von Papen's secretary, at 60 Wall Street, New 
York, agents of the Department of Justice had 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 79 

found von IgeFs memoranda of correspondence In 
arranging the expedition through the San Fran- 
cisco consulate. But Chakravarty said that the 
revolutionary end of the project had been handled 
by another Hindu, Ram Chandra, and denied that 
he was guilty of any part In it. Ram Chandra 
had negotiated with the German consuls In Seattle 
and San Francisco, and through them with 
Tauscher and von Papen. Chakravarty supplied 
the names of Hindus who had sailed on the Annie 
Larsen, said that there had been Filipinos and 
Germans aboard as well, and added that the 
Filipinos had been transferred to a German ship, 
and had later escaped from her in a motorboat 
while she was being pursued by a Japanese cruiser. 
But, he said, he had nothing to do with it — it 
was Ram Chandra who was the real agent. 

It was this Ram Chandra who was editor of 
the Hindu revolutionary newspaper Ghadr 
(Mutiny) published at Berkeley, California. He 
succeeded to the editor's chair in 19 14 when his 
predecessor, Har Dayal, out on bail after an ar- 
rest for ultra-free speech, had fled across the con- 
tinent and the Atlantic Ocean to Berlin. There 
Dayal established the Hindustani Revolutionary 
Committee, collaborating with, taking orders 
from, and financed by the German Government, 



8o THROTTLED 

under the direction of Herr Wesendonck of the 
Foreign Office. Ten million marks had been 
placed to their credit, and German consulates 
throughout the neutral world had instructions 
through their parent-embassies to render all possi- 
ble assistance to the revolutionary project, and 
to spend whatever money might be necessary, 
charging it to the account of the Indian Nationalist 
Party. Three hundred thousand dollars was in- 
vested in China and Java. Hindus were sent 
through Persia and Afghanistan into India with 
German credit to foster unrest, and Afghanistan 
itself was full of spies trying to break the Amir's 
promise, given to the British Government at the 
outbreak of war, that he would maintain strict neu- 
trality. It was this same Har Dayal who con- 
ferred with Chakravarty when the latter made 
his visit to Berlin in December, 19 15. The rea- 
son for this visit to Berlin came out very soon, and 
that will lead us in turn to the second of the Ger- 
man-Hindu plots hatched in America,, 

Chakravarty got bail from a surety company 
without much trouble. Two or three days after 
his arrest he called me up on the telephone and 
said that a man named Gupta had threatened him. 
** He says I must give him $2,000. And there 
is another man named Wagel. He is a Hindu. 



























































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THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 8i 

He wants $10,000 from me, otherwise he will do 
me harm. He already has had $7,000 from the 
German Government In Mexico. He has de- 
manded $20,000,000 of Count von Bernstorff to 
finish up the revolution in India." 

*' Wait a minute, now," I suggested. The fig- 
ures were going to my head. *' Where Is 
Wagel?" 

" I do not know," Chakravarty answered. 

''Well, where Is Gupta?" 

" He Is a student at Columbia," replied the lit- 
tle man. 

" All right, doctor," I said, " we'll not let any 
harm come to you." 

Detectives Coy and Walsh at once got on the 
trail of Gupta. They found him in his dormitory 
room at 73 Livingston Hall, Columbia, and 
brought him to headquarters. " I saw of Chak- 
ravarty's arrest in the paper," he said, " and I 
thought I might be arrested if he implicated me." 
Gupta knew full well he would be arrested, for 
there was jealousy between the two, and he went 
on to reveal why. 

Heramba Lai Gupta was then thirty-two years 
old. Since his boyhood In Calcutta he had been 
all over the world, and had studied in the United 
States. In the spring of 19 15 he had several 



82 THROTTLED 

conferences with Captain von Papcn in the city 
In which the mihtary attache conceived such con- 
fidence in the young Hindu that he gave him $15,- 
000 for expense money and sent him to Chicago 
to confer with Gustav Jacobsen, an ex-German 
consul. With him went Jodh Singh, another 
Hindu who had migrated from Brazil to Berlin 
and thence to Captain von Papen, and an art 
collector named Albert H. Wehde. They were 
joined by George Paul Boehm and a German 
named Sterneck, and two plans were arranged. 
Gupta, Singh and Wehde were to proceed to 
Japan to establish connections and obtain assist- 
ance for fomenting Indian revolt. Boehm and 
Sterneck were to go to the Philippines, pick up 
a third plotter, Chakravarty's lawyer-friend 
Chatterji, proceed thence to Java to meet two 
escaped officers of the destroyed German cruiser 
Emden, and thence to the Himalayan hills north 
of India, where Dr. Frederick A. Cook, the 
Arctic romancer, was on an expedition. There 
they were to overpower the Cook party, Boehm 
was to assume the explorer's identity and travel 
about the hills spreading sedition among the na- 
tive tribes. This wild plan failed completely, as 
the Germans never kept their appointment In Java. 
(Gupta believed in preparedness to the extent of 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 83 

taking Boehm to several shooting galleries In 
Chicago and practising pistol firing with him.) 

Gupta, Singh and Wehde set sail from San 
Francisco in the Mongolia and landed in Yoko- 
hama, September 16, 19 15. Gupta immediately 
got in touch with various prominent Hindus. Al- 
though their conferences were enthusiastic and the 
prospect of obtaining Japanese arms for the revo- 
lution was good, his work was hampered by the 
discovery on the part of British agents that Gupta 
was in Japan. He was notified within a week of 
his arrival that he must leave by the next steamer: 
the next steamer was bound for Shanghai, a 
British port; the order was equal to delivery Into 
the hands of the British, and death. A Japanese 
friend came to his rescue. He took him to his 
house, followed by the police. By a subterfuge 
the police were distracted long enough to allow 
the Hindu to slip out the back door, jump into an 
automobile, and flee to the interior of the coun- 
try. There he was hidden for six months, be- 
tween the flimsy walls of his friend's house. It 
was May of 19 16 before he could escape, smug- 
gled out in an eastbound vessel, and it was June 
before he returned to New York. There he 
found that the following order had been issued 
from Berlin: 



84 THROTTLED 

" Berlin, February 4, 191 6. To the German Em- 
bassy, Washington. 

*' In future all Indian affairs are to be exclu- 
sively handled by the committee to be formed by 
Dr. Chakravarty. Dhirendra Sarkar and Her- 
ambra Lai Gupta, the latter of whom has mean- 
while been expelled from Japan, thus cease to be 
representatives of the Indian Independence Com- 
mittee existing here. 

"(Signed) Zimmermann." 

Gupta, in short, found himself displaced. His 
expedition had been a failure. Chakravarty had 
had his job for nearly six months. He tried to 
negotiate with Chakravarty for a restoration of 
some of his lost prestige, but the little man would 
not have much to do with him. In January, 1 9 1 7, 
the French secret service intercepted at the Swiss 
border a letter postmarked New York, Novem- 
ber 16, 19 1 6, and addressed as follows: 

** Mr. Albourge 
" Hotel Des Alpas 
" Territel 

" Montreau, Switzerland." 

The letter was in cipher, and was seized and re- 
turned to French agents in the United States, and 
by them turned over to the American authori- 
ties for investigation, at about the time when 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 85 

diplomatic relations were broken off with Ger- 
many. Search here disclosed little. The letter 
was typewritten, and the only clue to its message 
was a hint suggested by a sub-address on the back 
of the envelope: 

"Mr. Chatterjee" 

who was apparently a Hindu. (This, by the way, 
was the same Chatterjl who persists In cropping 
up in the wings of this story from time to time). 
Now there Is no " Hotel Des Alpas " In Mon- 
treux; the name of the Inn referred to Is the 
*' Hotel des Alpes." Again, the name " Terrl- 
tel " was apparently a misspelling of " Territet," 
and " Montreau " probably meant " Montreux." 
When we captured Gupta we found In a memo- 
randum book not only the address cited above, but 
the same misspellings — pretty conclusive proof 
that he was the author of the letter. This ad- 
dress was later found with the same misspellings. 
In the mailing list of Ghadr, the revolutionary 
paper published in California. Thus little errors 
combined to forge important links. 

The code of the Gupta letter was a popular and 
scholarly volume by an American author: Price 
Collier's " Germany and the Germans," published 
in New York in 1913. The letter was so written 



86 THROTTLED 

that the words which contained the meat of each 
sentence were carefully enciphered. The letter 
said, for example : 

"... I do 

not believe there 

are very many men 

including 

98-5-2 

98-1-1 

98-1-9 

98-4-1 

98-5-8 

98-3-3 



" Who can show much 
better results a- 
long the line of 

97-1-3 
97-1-11 

97-6-5 

97-8-4 



132-1-1 



" Undertook '' 

Turning to page 98 of " Germany and the Ger- 
mans," we see that the second letter of the fifth 
line is b; the first letter of the first line Is h; the 
ninth letter of the first line Is u; the first letter of 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 87 

the fourth line is p; the eighth in the fifth line is e; 
and the third in the third hne n. Sum total: 
B-h-u-p-e-n — a Hindu name. On page 97, the 
first few lines read: 

" am wilHng to concede that perhaps even an em- 
peror 

has been baptized with the blood of the martyrs, 

and feels himself to be in all sincerity the instru- 
ment 

of God; if we are to understand this one, we 
must 

admit so much. 

*' In certain . . ." etc. 

Thus 97-1-3 is Wj 97-1-11 is o, 97-6-5 is r, 
97-8-4 is K; total w-o-r-k. 132-1-1 is /. Our 
translation reads therefore: 

"/ do not believe that there are very many men 
including Bhiipen, who can show much better 
results along the line of work I undertook.'' 

Four columns to the typewritten page It ran on 
over seven sheets of foolscap, and wound up with 
a plea In plain English which showed that Gupta 
was angry: 

" Seems no action taken yet. If want work, 
change methods completely. I insist the man in 
charge is not only useless but spoiling the work; 



88 THROTTLED 

important workers wasting time for want of co- 
operation and funds while that man is squandering 
money. Do not care what you decide, I inform 
you as it is my duty but you don't seem to pay any 
attention. This is my last warning for the cause. 
Again I appeal to you to think more seriously and 
not spoil the work by leaving it in the hands of 
irresponsible and insane person. I again tell you 
that no one is willing to work with him because he 
does not understand anything, secondly he spends 
money in a ridiculous way, thirdly he does not do 
any work. Think seriously and reply." 

In order to show why Gupta was upset and also 
in passing to show how innocently he had coded his 
letter, we shall quote it in full, with those words 
in italics which had to be decoded months later: 

" Dear Chatto: Am back from Japan. Had 
lots trouble. Thakur, real name Rash Behari 
Ghose, splendid worker in India still in Japan. 
Sent report twice, besides messages through Ger- 
man sources. Went to Japan as planned. Am 
surprised to hear from Tarak you said I had no 
right to go to Japan. See my reports submitted 
to the committee. Before leaving Berlin Shang- 
hai authorities also wanted me for important 
work. This I was told at Ger7?ian Embassy so 
cannot understand why you failed to know any- 
thing about me. Have sent two reports since 
my return. Hope you got them. Tarak said 
you were not satisfied with my work and Bhupen 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 89 

Dutt said that such Incapable men as / should 
not have been sent to America. Bhupen be- 
fore leaving America said to Chakravarty * Gupta 
nothing but adventurer; should not have been 
sent,' and as usual everybody knew and it nat- 
urally prejudiced men / had to work with. What 
right had Bhupen to make such remarks? I don't 
claim to be a very capable man. You remember 
I did not want to come here. But how Bhupen 
measured my abilities? If no report was received 
how could anybody pass an opinion on unknown 
things? You may criticize my reticence. I do 
not believe there are very many men including 
Bhupen who can show much better results along 
the line of work I undertook. Results of such 
w^ork cannot be shown in black and white but I 
challenge anybody who dares ignore the solid work 
done through our agencies. Time alone can 
prove it. You cannot compare the work lately 
undertaken with the program we started with. If 
we failed to start a revolution in Bengal as asked 
by you It has been for the best. If we failed land 
arms It was due more to Germans than anybody 
else. Our men worked^ suffered. Still suffering. 
The whole plan under the direct supervision of 
Germans of more capable brains failed too. We 
have succeeded In laying foundation for future 
work. Our work In Japan has been unique. 
Even Lajpat Rat who slights our work, quite often 
admits In three months more solid zvork done there 
than any other part of the world outside India in 
number of years. I understand Chakravarty has 



90 THROTTLED 

charge of affairs. Met him. Tarak Harish says 
he was given instruction to form a committee oi 
five including myself. He did not agree. Said 
all depended on his discretion. Fact is he has 
grudge against me and the fault lies with you. 
Report went to Berlin concerning his relations with 
Mrs. Warren. You told him I did it. I did not. 
Even if I did you had no business to mention my 
name. I like also to know how did the com- 
mittee satisfy itself as to the charge being false. 
From Chakravarty's letters only? He wanted 
me to apologize. I did not: will not. First 
I did not report; secondly suppose I did, In the in- 
terest of the cause. I was of opinion he had 
connection with Mrs. Warren. She came to know 
many things about work through him. Am still 
of same opinion. I do not care how many women 
man enjoys but he has no right to talk about seri- 
ous work to women. I do not know what work 
he doing. Does not give me any Information. 
The house he took with princely furniture shows 
at once German connection. Some of his 
pamphlets nothing but German propaganda. It 
may be your policy. We have centres in Japan, 
Burmah, Manila; regular communication with 
India through Japanese sources. Working but 
badly in need of funds. Started work with Im- 
pression balance of funds credited to my account 
would be forthcoming but no sign of It. For 
better work need send at least one more man to 
Japan. Tarak going China, Chakravarty told 



L 



(3) 

If we 

119-1-3 
119-2-3 
119-1-2 
118-2-9 
118-2-3 
118-3-3 

118-1-4 
118-2-5 

118-2-4 

118-1-4 
118-3-1 
118-1-7 
116-1-4 

118-3-1 

83-1-2 

83-1-11 

83-1-25 

83-1-1 

83-1-8 

83-1-13 

83-1-18 

83-1-3 

83-1-1 

83-1-6 



83-1-3 
83-1-6 

82-2-5 
82-2-6 
82-3-4 
83-1-4 
82-2-3 
82-1-10 



As asked by you 
It has been for 
The best. If we 

119-1-3 

119-2-3 

119-1-2 

118-2-9 

118-2-3 

118-3-3 




THE INDISCREET ^ — ^ 

JFerence beWeen Germany and America politically, 

must nevy be left out of our calculations. Such 

stitution antt such rights as the German citizens 

were granted them by their rulers. The people 

PrHssia, or ot^avaria, or of Wurtemberg, have 

^.certain rtpwers to. and placed certain limi- 

TAILED 

/f./fT 
AND THE GERMANS 

for a moment in Germany that 

^some into real power, their vote 

Jnumber of\heir representatives in the 

away in one single elec- 

leader of men, no lover 
,ical colonist, and 



/» 



noted are far from 

as^ three hundred and 

whom two hundred and 

^its for five years, 

ath with the 



lb/ 



council, or Bundesrath, or upper 

consists of delegates aj)- 

ing the rulers of the vari- 

There^e sS^rngmbers. Prussia has 17, 

4, Baden 3, 



How the Hindus used Price Collier's "Germany and the 
Germans" as a cryptogram 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 91 

him his men would watch Tarak for a month. If 
behaves well will be helped, given facilities. 
What gratid diplomacy ! Chakravarty told me 
committee not sure of Tarak so sent him away. 
Tarak said large funds have been sanctioned. 
He can draw without receipt. Will you blame 
me (if this be true) if I fail to understand the 
policy? Ram Chandra working in his own way. 
I did not interfere for fear of creating divisions. 
Only helped getting funds. Have now influence 
over him but as Chakravarty gone San Francisco 
I consider my duty keep quiet until hear from you. 
Have worked to best abilities and shall work but 
cannot do so at the instance of people who I am 
sure do not know the exact nature of work done 
last year and half. Am surprised at mean jeal- 
ousies, even sacrificing work. Am shocked at 
your faith shaken in me and my work. Hope to 
hear soon all regarding work. Remember me to 
all. Did not mail the first letter as waiting for 
information from Berlin/^ 

Followed the postscript in English already cited. 

The reader will probably be interested, even at 
the cost of interrupting the narrative, in the way 
in which this cipher code was discovered and the 
letter translated. By a partial decipherment by 
common methods of deduction, it was found to 
be almost sure that on a certain page of the code 
book — the name of which was of course not 



92 THROTTLED 

then known — the phrase *' foreign legation" 
would appear. The cipher experts deduced, too, 
that the phrase " rush to a newspaper " must ap- 
pear in a certain line of another page of the 
volume, and working further they assembled some 
twenty-five fragmentary words and phrases of 
whose position in the missing volume they were 
certain. The problem was to find the volume. 
The nature of the words and phrases suggested 
that the work was a recent one, probably dealing 
with history — and perhaps with the nature of a 
people. These limitations reduced the field of 
possibility to a minimum of 100,000 volumes, and 
the cipher experts set agents at work searching 
for such books. The caption of the letter, " Hos- 
sain's Code," threw them off the scent and they 
spent some time in scouring Allied Europe and 
America for such a code. There was none, for 
" Houssain " was merely a Hindu agent in Trini- 
dad. Then, one of the agents hunting for the 
needle in the haystack found it — Mr. Collier's 
book. 

Gupta, it is evident, was a prejudiced judge 
of Chakravarty's ability. Even when Gupta was 
arrested Chakravarty wiped out past scores, and 
went bail for the man who had blackmailed and 
traduced him. But Gupta was definitely In 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 93 

trouble this time. The evidence supplied of his 
trip to Japan, its purpose, and his collusion with 
Germans brought him to trial in Chicago with 
Jacobsen, Wehde, and Boehm. (Mr. Chatterji 
was a witness for the prosecution.) The three 
Germans, after a trial in which the State's case 
had been admirably handled by U. S. District At- 
torney Clyne, were convicted and sentenced to 
serve five years in prison and pay fines of $13,000. 
Gupta was sentenced to two years, fined $200, 
and released on bail, pending an appeal. He 
jumped his bail and escaped to Mexico in May, 
19 1 8, while a number of his countrymen were be- 
ing tried in San Francisco. 

His escape was probably due to fear. The 
Hindus are a vengeful lot, and it is no more than 
possible that the *' grapevine cable " had informed 
him that friends of the men on trial in San Fran- 
cisco were planning to get even with him for hav- 
ing supplied part of the evidence used against 
them. Some of that evidence we found in his 
room at Columbia, and more in his safety deposit 
box in a Columbus Avenue bank. Among other 
items was the list of addresses in Switzerland al- 
ready mentioned, and this was amplified by a let- 
ter which we found in Chakravarty's house, from 
Sekunna to the little doctor, which read: 



94 THROTTLED 

" My dear boy, 

" Enclosed please find addresses from Wcsen- 
donck. Send your reports to : Mr. Director Karl 
Hirsch, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland." 

Chakravarty, in turn, furnished us with two 
more codes which were used in writing to these 
addresses: One which cited pages and word- 
numbers in a certain German-English dictionary, 
and a second, based on an entirely different prin- 
ciple. The second and third were often used in 
the same letter, as this fragment from one of 
Chakravarty's reports will show. The letter 
reads, in part: 



50337069403847695228, 265-3, 331-6, 
497-2» 337-10-3, 335-14. 77-1 !•" 



The first series of figures is written In the third 
code mentioned, and must be deciphered by using 
the following square: 

1234567 

1 ABCDEFG 

2 H I J K L MN 

3 OPQRSTU 

4 V WX Y Z 

Each letter is indicated first by the digit marking 
the horizontal row in which the letter falls, second 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 95 

by the number of the vertical column. Thus 
*' A " is i-i, or 1 1 : *' K " 2-4, or 24, and so on. 
But If the Hindu wished to transfer a message in 
cipher, he would not stop with this simple designa- 
tion of the letters, for they would recur too often 
and fall too readily under the " laws of repeti- 
tion " by which most ciphers can be untangled. 
So after he had his word translated by this square 
chart, he added four key numbers to It, those key 
numbers being fixed and permanent, and being 
added in rotation. In order that we may find out 
what this word is, we must therefore subtract the 
key number thus : 

Message 50337069403847695228 (or divided 
into letters) 

50 33 70 69 40 38 47 69 52 28 
Key numbers 25 11 26 32 25 11 26 32 25 11 

Result 25 22 44 37 15 27 21 37 26 17 

Consulting our chart again, we see that 25 is 
" L," 22 Is " I " 44 is " Y," and that the message 
deciphers thus: 

LIYUENHUNG 

The line we quoted above read: 

" Li Yuen Hung is now the president of China " 



96 THROTTLED 

After transmitting the proper-name In the second 
cipher (as the name of course would not have ap- 
peared in the dictionary code), Chakravarty had 
lapsed back into the first code, as being swifter. 

Gupta, we observed, was harshly critical of 
Chakravarty. Let us see whether he was justi- 
fied. Chakravarty said he had been commissioned 
to deal only with the broader propaganda. From 
captured reports which he transmitted through the 
German embassy as well as through the mails to 
Switzerland, he had been delegated to form a com- 
mittee of five, with Ram Chandra as one of the 
other members, to handle Indian affairs here. 
They were to send an agent to the West Indies to 
stir up the Hindu coolies there, of whom there 
were estimated to be 100,000, and to send back to 
India all who would volunteer for revolution. 
The same policy was to be followed in British 
Guiana, Java, and Sumatra. From Ram Chan- 
dra's Ghadr press were to be issued reams of 
propaganda in the various Indian dialects for 
circulation throughout the East and West Indies, 
in Hindustan itself, and even for German aviators 
to drop upon Hindu troops In France. Chakra- 
varty was to procure letters of Introduction to 
parties in Japan which would assure a safe wel- 
come to an emissary to be sent there to carry out 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 97 

what Gupta had failed to do, and an envoy was 
to be sent to China for a similar purpose. It was 
a broad program, and the doctor set to work im- 
mediately upon his return to organize his staff. 
In all his work he had the cooperation of von 
Bernstorff and the embassy at Washington. Cha- 
kravarty organized a Pan-Asiatic League as a 
blind, so that Hindus posing as Its members could 
travel without exciting suspicion. His work was 
somewhat handicapped in the early spring by an 
automobile accident which took him to the hos- 
pital, and by the seizure of the military attache's 
papers In von Igel's office. He hired a Chinaman 
named Chin as the delegate to China, and shipped 
him off on a Greek vessel from New York. Re- 
ferred by Berlin to Houssain, the spy in Trinidad, 
Chakravarty established contact with him, and 
supervised the formation of an organization there. 
In July Chakravarty started for a tour of the 
West, in the course of which he visited two dis- 
loyal Hindus in Vancouver and determined upon 
a plan of action for that section. Then he swung 
down to San Francisco, where he called upon Ram 
Chandra, the western head of the committee. He 
conferred with friendly agents of Japanese news- 
papers who proposed to attack the Anglo-Japa- 
nese treaty. He conferred with W. T. Wang, 



98 THROTTLED 

private secretary to the new president of China, 
as the secretary was leaving for Peking, and 
learned that " some of the prominent people are 
quite willing to help India directly and Germany 
indirectly — on three conditions, those conditions 
being a secret treaty with Germany for military 
protection, to last five years after peace had been 
declared, and to be secured by giving China one- 
tenth of all the arms and ammunition which she 
would undertake to smuggle across the Indian 
frontier." By the late autumn of 191 6 Chakra- 
varty was acting as the master-wheel in a most 
elaborate and complicated machine for disturbing 
British rule in almost all of her colonial holdings, 
and it is safe to say that if the Maverick affair 
had not roused shipping inspectors to unusual 
vigilance to prevent filibustering, the United 
States might have seen the bloody result of his 
work by March of 19 17, when we arrested him. 
Even as it was, he was the general manager of a 
going concern. 

It may be wondered how he was able to per- 
fect an organization. The answer to that we 
found in Gupta's safety deposit box — a list of 
two hundred or more members of an Indian so- 
ciety in the United States, a large proportion of 
whom were students in American colleges, sent 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 99 

here for education on scholarships, In the hope 
that they would return to their native country and 
uplift It. Some of them were influential agents, 
and they were scattered conveniently about the 
country. Add to this force the cooperation of 
almost innumerable German agents and pay it 
with a share of the $32,000,000 which Chakra- 
varty said had been set aside in Berlin for 
anarchistic, race-riot and Hindu propaganda in 
the western world, and you have a real factor 
for trouble. It Is perhaps surprising that the 
organization worked undiscovered as long as It 
did, but It Is more surprising that having worked 
under cover for more than fourteen months It 
did not break out Into a grave demonstration. 
Chakravarty's arrest, however, came in time, and 
the authorities were on the whole satisfied that 
so much time had elapsed because it gave them 
more clues to work on and a larger group to 
round up. 

And Chakravarty himself was pleased, I think. 
When he confessed his trip to Berlin, he was on 
the horns of a dilemma, for he feared the Brit- 
ish would revenge themselves on him. I assured 
him that he would be protected as an American 
prisoner. He said, " Well, If I tell you about 
what I have done for the Germans, and they hear 



lOD THROTTLED 

about it, they will kill me. And in any case my 
own people will kill me. You don't know them ! '* 
I again quieted him and suggested that he tell 
me now where he got the money which he said 
had come to him from his estate in India. 

" Von Igel gave it to me," he answered. " I 
could not go to his office downtown, so I sent 
Sekunna. In all I got $60,000. I spoke of the 
poet, Tagore, because he won the Nobel prize, 
and I thought he would be above suspicion." He 
had bought the house at 364 West 120th Street 
and equipped it comfortably as a residence. He 
bought a house in 77th Street to open a Hindu 
restaurant. He bought a farm at Hopewell Junc- 
tion to use as a rendezvous for the plotters. And 
when he had given us valuable information, and 
had appeared at the trial, and had been himself 
convicted and had served his sentence (a short 
term) in jail, and the smoke had cleared away, he 
was the owner of three nice parcels of real estate 
and a comfortable income. Dr. Chakravarty, al- 
though a failure as a Prussian agent, fared pretty 
well as an investor of Prussian funds. 

After a series of digressions which I hope have 
not led us too far from the path, we may return 
to the third of the Hindu-German projects in 
which we of the Bomb Squad were especially in- 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES loi 

terested. Ever since Captain von Papen's check- 
book had been captured by the British at Fal- 
mouth In January, 191 6, students of the German 
plots in the United States had wondered why two 
of the stubs bore the entries: 

*' Feb. 2, 19 1 5, German Consulate, Se- 
attle (Angelegenhelt) . . . .$1,300. 
"May II, 1915, German Consulate, 
Seattle 

(for Schulenberg) 500/* 

In December, 19 17, Barnltz, Randolph and I had 
gone to San Francisco to testify In the Annie Lar- 
sen-Maverick case. It so happened that a Ger- 
man who was unable to give a satisfactory account 
of himself had just been picked up at San Jose. 
His name was Franz Schulenberg, and at the In- 
vitation of the San Francisco authorities we as- 
sisted in the examination of the prisoner. He 
testified that In the early months of 19 15 he had 
met Lieutenant von Brincken, of the San Fran- 
cisco Consulate, who had sent him to the consul 
at Seattle. There von Papen In person paid him 
$4,000 to buy fifty guns, fifty Maxim silencers, a 
ton of dynamite, and deliver It to one Singh, at 
the border between Sumas, Washington, and 
Canada. There Singh was to deliver It to a small 



102 THROTTLED 

^rmy of coolies, who would start a reign of terror 
in the Canadian northwest, dynamiting bridges, 
railways and shipping, and shooting guards. 
Schulenberg had actually bought some of the muni- 
tions when he received a letter from von Brincken 
telling him to break off relations with the Hindus. 
After some time he tried to get more money from 
von Brincken, but Franz Bopp, the consul, spurned 
him, and von Brincken sent him to New York, to 
get it from von Papen. Von Papen refused to 
pay him further. While Schulenberg was in Ho- 
boken, three men from Paul Koenig's staff ap- 
proached him and posing as United States agents 
offered him $5,000 for any information which 
would incriminate Count von Bernstorff. Von 
Papen had had Koenig send them — although 
Schulenberg did not know this — to test him. 
One of the three was George Fuchs. The air was 
getting thick around von Papen's head at the mo- 
ment, and he could not afford to have a dis- 
gruntled and unpaid henchman gabbling about the 
saloons in Hoboken. But Schulenberg believed 
that the three were really American secret service 
men, and refused to divulge what he knew. The 
next morning a German whom he had not seen 
before appeared at his lodging house and gave 
him a railroad ticket to Mexico. " They're after 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 103 

you — the secret service," he said. " Here's a 
ticket. Use It." Schulenberg was half sick any- 
way, and evidently it did not enter his mind to 
squeal. He fled to Mexico, and von Papen thus 
disposed of a troublesome source of information. 
When we talked to Schulenberg, two years later, 
he was a sorry reminder of another German fail- 
ure. 

Although we three members of the Bomb Squad 
had made the trip to San Francisco to testify to 
the circumstances of Chakravarty's arrest, and to 
the statements which he and Gupta had made, 
we were not In at the death of the Hindu hunt. 
The trial was a long affair, with more than a 
hundred defendants. Aided by the revelations of 
the little doctor, the Government had presented 
to the Grand Jury a picture of violation of Sec- 
tion 13 of the Federal Code which caused indict- 
ments to be returned against the entire German 
consulate of San Francisco, Its accomplices among 
the shipping men who chartered the Annie Larsen 
and bought the Maverick, its Hindu agents from 
the nucleus of Berkeley and Ram Chandra's edi- 
torial rooms, and a list of other notorious char- 
acters which included von Papen and von Igel, 
both of whom were by this time safe in Germany. 
We did, however, have opportunity to observe the 



104 THROTTLED 

Indian prisoners, and we noticed that they did 
not seem altogether fond of each other. They 
were forever whispering, wagging their heads, 
stuffing notes down each other's necks and when 
the testimony of one of their number grew too 
truthful they squirmed and scowled. Chakra- 
varty's life was threatened during the trial. The 
officials in charge of the case all had more than 
their usual share of responsibility to maintain or- 
der. The trial lasted more than six months. 
The Germans upbraided each other in the court 
room: von Brincken, who had been jealous of 
Bopp, and had accused him of indifference to his 
duties, openly showed his independence of his 
chief, and ill feeling spread among the defendants. 
Its climax came on April 24, 19 18, the day when, 
with the testimony all in. Judge Van Fleet ordered 
a recess preparatory to delivering his charge to 
the jury. Ram Singh, one of the defendants, sud- 
denly rose in the court room and fired two shots 
at Ram Chandra from a revolver. Ram Chandra 
fell dead, and as he did so, a bullet from the 
revolver of United States Marshal Holohan broke 
Ram Singh's neck. The jury then received its 
charge, retired, and returned convictions of the 
great majority of the conspirators. 

So, just as Holohan's bullet broke Ram Singh's 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 105 

neck, Chakravarty's statements had broken the 
neck of the Hindu plot. But there was one more 
incident related to It in store for us; It will con- 
clude our story. The men In charge of the Annie 
Larsen were a spy named Alexander V. KIrchelsen 
and a Captain Othmer. Klrchelsen^s name had 
appeared in several German secret service reports 
as " K-17." As late as 19 17 he was arrested In 
Copenhagen, Denmark, and on his person was 
found a letter addressed to another agent. La 
Nine by name. The letter advised La Nine that 
if he arrived in the United States before KIrchel- 
sen, he was to call for the former's mail at " Kot- 
zenberg's, 13 19 Teller Avenue, in the Bronx." 

When this information reached us, Detectives 
Randolph and Senff called at Mr. Kotzenberg's 
house. He knew nothing of KIrchelsen, he said, 
except that he was a friend of his cousin's. 

*' Who Is your cousin?" asked Randolph, in 
German. 

" His name is Othmer," Kotzenberg replied. 
*' He escaped from San Francisco, and he came 
back across the whole country, half by train and 
half in automobile. He stayed here for a while. 
One morning he put on some overalls and he left 
and he went away on a Norwegian boat, and I 
guess now he is back into Germany." 



io6 THROTTLED 

Randolph and Senff searched the house. They 
found among other papers, an application which 
Kircheisen had filled out in New York on January 
9, 19 17, for a certificate of service as an able sea- 
man. In order to be granted such a certificate he 
had to swear that he was a naturalized citizen of 
the United States, and that he would " support and 
defend the Constitution of the United States 
against all enemies . . . and . . . bear true faith 
and allegiance to the same," which he swore with- 
out any qualms of conscience. Furthermore, his 
character was attested to by one Charles A. 
Martin, who also wanted a seaman's certificate. 
The records of the office show that Kircheisen 
obligingly turned about and swore to Martin's 
good character. I have often wondered who 
Martin was. . . . We found in Kotzenberg's 
house an expense account which the fugitive 
Othmer had submitted to von Papen after he had 
left the unfortunate Annie at Hoquiam. And 
finally, we found two scraps of a memorandum 
book, which constituted the log of Annie herself. 
It reads ; 

" Mar.8. left S.D. 
Mar. 1 8. arr Soc. 
Apr.5. Start Digg.wells. 
Apr.9 boat Emma arrived. 



ff' 



X' 



APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE AS ABLE SEAMAN Fil£ No. S 



Department of Commerce 

STEAMBOAT-INSPECTION SERVICE 




rvu.v- Tau^n. ..^fW. m^K *' 

NEW YORK 



SMc, TetrUoi-;!, or D. C. . 



N S ><»'"' 



, 191 



MB<^.^T-^^•sPECTIO^- Skrv[ce, 



vlv f. r « cirriiicale of wrrko as .\1>1.< '^t-Hmun im ili.» 

-::L:^::M !!^lmNU WaIEHS 



ill llu- voar / / l^ 



/ 



nit ;i ■^[aloiiicnt: 'if lu) bvrvi'f .m •!.'• k I'f ..■-..■•; t he s«rric«> boing 
fcrt;!i!\itv. 



' 9 



l«st biunM to lull \ 



oml Strl.' 



r.'.oat U» upplicont, before any votajiy prBuc, 

Us© tfiiii Ihi i^en iHifAro a juutiro tA the pcnc»* or 'iiher «>*r:o€ 
v'f coiul, ^-eoretiury of etaU-, t-r oth**r j.-x^pcr (.•tfictfr, und-.T 4>f&i-iul 



oro itn- by i h" .-.i^-.v-o-iiAmtvl itpplicont, this . .... ''. . .. day of 



^/~ 



. .;fi>i^ founty of 






[< >T!fI '.!. lill'HK-iSI'W .;KKI,.j 



(OJical title. ; 
lid inlind waters," or ° 'Ureat Litds and olhtv inlsiui mtcn." 



Alexander V. Kircheisen and his application for a certificate 

as able seaman 



THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES 107 

2 sailors. 
Apr. 10. Emma arrived. 

two crews working on well 
April 16. Well 22 feet struck 

hard rock bottom no water gave up 
Apr. 17. left for Mex. coast 
" 22 went ashore in boat 
look for water 
Apr. 24th. arr at Acapulco 

U. S. S. Yorktown Nansham{ ?) 
N.Orleans Annapolis 
April 27 left Acapulco 
May 19 gave up Socorro 

made for coast 
June 7 {two illegible words) 

got provisions 
June 29 arr. Hoquiam 
July I arr. W. 

I arr. Investigator 
Jul. 4 aus " 

So, In a word, Othmer summed up all the efforts 
of the Hindus and the Germans to hatch revolu- 
tion in America. All, all '* aus "/ 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 

Of all the stories of the sea to which the war 
has given rise, here is one that is certainly not the 
least entertaining. It is not a story of hunting a 
criminal. The only part which the Bomb Squad 
played in it was bringing the prisoner back to 
justice. It called for no service on our part save 
that of examining the prisoner, and returning 
him, with his statements and the statements of 
others who had dealings with him, to New York. 
And I think those statements themselves had best 
tell the story. 

{From Detective Corell to the Commanding Offi- 
cer of the Bomb Squad, April i, igi6) 

Sir: In compliance with orders received I 

went to Lewes, Delaware, to investigate and if 

possible bring back one Ernest Schiller, an alleged 

German spy. . . . 

io8 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 109 

(From a statement taken by Corell at Lewes , Del., 
March 5/, igi6) 
My name Is Ernest Schiller. I am a native of 
Russia, 23 years of age. . . . My occupation is 
that of textile engineer. I arrived in New York 
in April, 19 15, in the steamship Colorado from 
Hull, England, as a member of the crew, my as- 
signment on the ship being greaser. My name on 
the ship was Frank Robertson. When I arrived 
at New York the captain gave me some of my 
money and I left the ship. I worked all told 
about eight or nine months, In Pawtucket, R. I., 
Lawrence, Mass., Whitinsvllle, Mass., Newton 
Upper Falls, Mass., and finished erecting a fac- 
tory In Salem, Mass. . . . 

(From the examination of Clarence Reginald 
Hodson, alias Ernest Schiller, Robinson, Robert- 
son, A. Henry, New York, April i, igi6) 

Question. What Is your full name? 

Answer. Clarence Reginald Hodson. 

Q. What other names are you known by? 

A. Robinson, Robertson, A. Henry, and 
Ernest Schiller. 

Q. Where were you born? 

A. Petrograd, Russia. 

Q, Where were your father and mother born ? 



no THROTTLED 

A, My father in Russia, my mother in Ger- 
many. We lived in Petrograd until I was about 
10 or II. Then we went to England. My 
father and mother left me in Chatham House 
College, In Ramsgate. I stayed there three 
years. . . . 

Q. What is the name of the head of that col- 
lege? 

A, A. Henry. 

Q. Did you graduate? 

A, No. I was put on a Cadet — a Marine 
ship — named Conway, to train as a marine 
officer. I was on that ship two years. I left 
when I was 17 and went to work in a machine shop 
in Oldham, outside Manchester, and learned the 
trade of machinist there. I left there in August, 
19 14, and I joined the English Army. ... I 
was asked to leave the job — was told that they 
would not have any young fellows on the job. 
. . . My boss said that sooner or later I should 
have to leave and that it would be better to go 
now, and that there would be a better opportun- 
ity. 

Q. At that time were your sympathies with the 
English? 

A. They were never with England. I just 
wanted to see what it was like to be a soldier. I 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE in 

didn't intend to fight against Germany. I did 
not think the war would last long — only a few 
months — and I knew all the time I could run 
away if I wanted to. So in December I left. 

Q. What was the occasion of your leaving? 

A. I commenced to discriminate the soldiers 
and make them out as to what they really were, 
and I found them a lot of rats. I saw that I 
was not a Britisher in my ideas, and that I favored 
the cause of Germany. I used to stay away from 
the other soldiers all I could, and go out with a 
newspaper and read in the fields. They were al- 
ways bullyragging me, and one time I almost 
killed two soldiers for it. They chastised me 
for a German spy. I got away, and worked in 
Bath for a week, and then the police caught me 
and brought me back, and I was later discharged 
by my colonel when I explained that I could not 
agree with their theory of the war. . . . 

(From the statement of ''Schiller*' to Corel!} 
A few months ago I received a letter from my 
mother and she wanted me to go back to Russia. 
I came down to New York to get my passport, but 
it did not arrive, so I waited a month. My money 
was gradually going down, so I borrowed some 
money, I won't say from whom. ..." 



112 THROTTLED 

(From the examination of Hodson) 

Q. While in Lawrence, Mass., where did you 
stop? 

A. At the Saxsonia House, with Germans. . . . 

Q, What are the names of any other people 
that you met at the Saxsonia House ? 

A, Met a gentleman named Gruenwald at a 
German party. He invited me to come to his 
saloon in Lawrence. . . . 

Q. While up in his saloon was there anybody 
else you were acquainted with there? 

A. Nobody, but I knew a young lady who 
stopped at the same house. . . . 

Q, You were quite friendly with her? 

A, Yes, platonic friendship. 

Q. Did she loan you any money? 

A. She loaned me money from her own 
will. Two hundred dollars. ... I only asked 
for $30, but she brought $200 in gold, all in 
gold. . . . 

Q, How long after that before she loaned you 
any more? 

A» About a month later. . . . Telegraphed 
to her " Want money immediately." I received 
by 12 o'clock $40. She said some more money 
coming tonight. Next morning I went to the 
address in Hoboken and there was a letter and 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 113 

there was another $40 in the letter. Then I re- 
ceived $10 another time from her. 

Q, That's $290. 

J, Yes, all I can think of. 

(From the *' Schiller*^ statement) 
... so I borrowed some money, I won't say 
from whom. I went to Boston again and was 
looking for work. I could not get the work 
I wanted, so I returned to New York, and in 
Hoboken I ran across a few fellows, I do not 
know their names, and we made a plan to get 
some money. . . . 

(From the Hodson examination) 

Q, Now where did you meet the Germans? 

J. When I arrived in New York, in a saloon 
near the Cunard Steamship Company in West 
Street about 12th, I met a man who I thought 
was a German, and I talked to him about blow- 
ing up ships, and we then went to Hoboken where 
I met the man Haller in a saloon. . . . Then we 
proposed which ship to blow up. That was the 
Cunard liner Pannonia. . . . 

Q. And how did you come to decide upon 
that boat? 

J, Because I knew perfectly well that all were 



114 THROTTLED 

carrying plenty of ammunition. ... I went down 
to the piers, and I saw this boat, and I thought 
that would be the right kind of a boat. ... I 
met the three men in the vicinity of Pier 54. I 
bought them their suppers. ... I then told the 
unknown man to get some dynamite . . . and 
I gave him $6. Becker said that he had a boat, 
and I gave Becker $8 to buy gasolene, then to 
buy" two revolvers out of a pawnshop. ... I 
bought Haller a revolver and 100 cartridges. , . * 

Q, Did you see them after that? 

A. Yes, I saw them Saturday morning and 
asked Becker about his motorboat and he said 
that he did not expect it would be frozen up, 
and acted as if he would have been willing to go 
into the plot only that the boat was frozen up. 
Becker said that the boat could be launched in 
two hours, and although I do not know anything 
about running a motorboat it is my belief that 
it would have taken six hours to launch this boat 
— the boat we were supposed to use to go over in 
to blow up the Pannonia — and this would be too 
late to get to the ship before she sailed. . . . 
Since that time I have not seen any of these 
men. . . . 

(From the " Schiller " statement) 
ft . . but the other fellows left me, so I went on 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 115 

my own accord. I saw the steamship Mattoppo 
was going to leave, so I stowed away on her, in a 
life boat, where I remained for five days. The 
sixth day we left. ... 

(From the statement of Captain R. Bergner, of 
the British S. S. '' Mattoppo '') 
At 3 130 p. M. on the 29th March, the British 
S. S. Mattoppo sailed from 12th Street pier, 
Hoboken, destined to Vladlvostock, Russia. 

(From the ^' Schiller '' statement) 
That night ... I came out from my hiding 
place and walked towards the captain's cabin. . . . 

(From Captain Bergner^s statement) 
At about 7 :45 p. M. . . . when at a point about 
twenty miles from Sandy Hook Lightship, I was 
talking to the Chief Engineer in his room, and 
at 8 105 P. M. left and went to my own cabin, 
and as I entered my bedroom, which was adjoin- 
ing, I was held up at the point of two revolvers 
by one Ernest Schiller, who said to me : " Hands 
up ! I am a German. I am going to sink your 
ship." He then made me turn round and gave 
me a frisk. He found nothing on me. He or- 
dered me to shut my cabin door; then stood me in 
a corner and kept me covered with the two re- 
volvers. Then he said: "Where is the safe? 



ii6 THROTTLED 

You have two thousand pounds aboard, and I 
want the money! " He told me he had placed 
bombs aboard the ship and was going to blow 
her up. 

At 8 :20 p. M. the Second Engineer knocked at 
my door, and receiving no reply opened it. Schil- 
ler instantly covered him with one of the revolvers 
and ordered him to come into the room, which 
he did. He then locked and bolted the doors on 
the inside and asked me for my keys. . . . He 
got them and proceeded to go through all the 
shlp^s papers and my private effects. He opened 
my cash box and took four pounds in gold and 
five pounds in silver and said it was the first time 
he had ever robbed anyone but he needed the 
money. On seeing from the ship's papers that she 
had barbed wire in her, he said: " That is con- 
traband, and I am going to sink her.'' He then 
inquired where I was bound for, and on my tell- 
ing him she was going to Russia he seemed to 
hesitate about sinking her as he said he loved 
Russia. The conversation continued until about 
midnight. . . . 

(From the '' Schiller '^ statement) 
While I was In the Captain's room the Second 
Engineer came up, and after searching him to 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 117 

see if he had any revolvers on him, I told him to 
sit down and make himself comfortable. I asked 
the Captain if he had any whiskey, as I was cold 
and had not had much to eat for five days, so 
the Captain gave me a bottle of whiskey and 
biscuits. After wishing one another good health 
we sat there for a couple of hours. . . . 

(From Captain Bergner^s statement) 
At midnight he said that he was going to dis- 
able the wireless, and on hearing someone in 
the chart room he bound me on my honor not to 
leave the cabin saying that if I did he would shoo** 
me on sight. . . . 

(From the statement of the Second Ofjicer Allen 

Maclurcom) 
When I came on watch at midnight I passed 
someone outside the chart room, but it being dark, 
and thinking it was the Captain, I walked on into 
the chart room, where this party followed me, 
and told me to throw my hands up. He told 
me the ship was under German command, and not 
attempt to make any resistance as it would mean 
the sacrifice of the Captain's and Second En- 
gineer's lives. He said if the ship had been go- 
ing to England he would have destroyed her im- 



ii8 THROTTLED 

mediately, but as she was bound for Russia he 
would probably spare her. Then he told me to 
walk ahead of him to the port-after-lifeboat, and 
get the axe, which was in the forward end of It. 
He then took me back to the Marconi room. . . . 

(From the statement of the wireless operator, 
Alexander Diinnett) 
I was on watch in the wireless room Vv^hen this 
man came along with the Second Officer. He 
held me up with two revolvers, and brought me 
along to the apprentice's room, together with the 
Second Officer. The latter told the apprentice, 
who acts as second operator, to come out. Schil- 
ler held him up, and told us both to go up to the 
chart room. . . . 

(From the Second Officer^s statement) 
He then took me back to the Marconi room, and 
proceeded to demolish the installation, holding 
the revolver against my ribs. From there he went 
to the Chief Engineer's cabin and demanded his 
rifle, I accompanying him, and after obtaining 
it, threw it overboard. From there he made me 
walk ahead of him to the Chief Officer's cabin, 
who he disarmed whilst he was asleep. He then 
ordered me to the bridge to steer south-west by 
compass, and as I was going on the bridge the 




Lieutenant George D. Bamitz, U. S. N. 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 119 

Third Officer came down and he held him up, I 
going on the bridge in the meanwhile. 

(From the Wireless Operator's statement) 
Schiller came back again, and took us into the 
Captain's room. Some time later he came back 
again and brought me down to the wireless room 
to see if I could repair the wireless installation, 
which he said he had smashed. I told him it 
might be possible to repair one instrument, and he 
said, " We will leave It until morning," and then 
brought me along the deck to the Fourth and Fifth 
Engineers' cabins and I opened the door and he 
went in. Both engineers were asleep and he made 
me search all the drawers; he brought out a re- 
volver and a box of cartridges, which he made me 
throw over the side. He then took me to the 
Third Engineer's cabin, and searched all the 
drawers there. He brought out of there a bottle 
of whiskey, and asked me if I had any money. 
Then he marched me up to the Captain's cabin and 
ordered me to remain there until 6 A. M. 

(From ^^ Schiller's '* statement) 
I went Into the various officers' rooms and took 
all the revolvers from them. From the Steward 
I took ten dollars, and a two-dollar bill from the 
Second Mate. 



I20 JHROTTLED 

(From the Second Officer^s statement) 
At 1 130 A. M. he returned to the bridge and 
ordered me to steer south by compass. 

(From the '' Schiller ^' statement) 
Then I went to the Captain's cabin again, and 
told him I should sink the ship, but the Captain 
said he has worked since a boy on ships for a few 
shillings a week and he has worked himself up to 
this and surely it has not come to this. He said 
he has a wife and a child — a girl — and showed 
me on the wall the portrait of the child, and I 
asked him suppose the ship went down would he 
get another job, and he said he would have to 
work as a longshoreman. He said it was too 
rough for the boats to be lowered, so I did not 
want to commit murder. And knowing that the 
Captain would lose his position, and as I am a 
young man and can always find work, I asked the 
Captain if he will put me ashore in the morning. 
He gave me his word of honor that he would. . . . 

(From Captain Bergner^s statement) 
At 5 :30 A. M. ... he let me take charge of 
the ship, and I made for Delaware Break- 
water. . . . 

(From the Wireless Operator's statement) 
At 6 A. M. he told me I could go below, but 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 121 

not to go into the wireless room. I was along 
near the carpenter's room when he was searching 
it, and he made me bring out an axe and took me 
to the wireless room again; there he told me 
to smash up one of the instruments, and he stood in 
back of me threatening me. I asked him then if 
that would do, after I had partly demolished the 
instruments, and he told me to leave the axe 
and lock the door, which I did. He then left 
me. 

(From " Schiller's '^ statement) 

When we sighted shore the Captain said that 
we would have to go straight towards the light- 
house, or else, if we went the other way (the way 
I wanted to) we should run ashore, so I left it 
to the Captain and trusted to his word, as he said 
he would land me. . . . 

(From Captain Bergner^s statement) 
On approaching land he ordered one of the 
ship's boats to be manned, and said that he was 
going to take two of the ship's officers along as 
hostages to guarantee that I should not run him 
down, and he wanted three Chinese from the crew 
to row him ashore. . . . 



122 THROTTLED 

(From the statement of John S. Wingate, Keeper 
of the Cape Henlopen Coast Guard Station) 
At about 1 1 130 A. M. I noticed a steamship 
coming in from off shore. I said to the crew that 
it was a v/ar vessel coming but I didn't know 
whether it was German or British. At 1 1 :45 the 
lookout reported to me that the steamer was 
headed direct for Hen and Chicken Shoal. I im- 
mediately ordered the signal " J. D." hoisted on 
the pole, which means, " You are standing into 
danger." When we supposed the ship saw our 
signal, he stopped, and laid to for about ten min- 
utes, when he hard a-port and went clear of the 
shoal. 

A few minutes later he lowered a boat — we 
thought to take soundings, for the poat pulled 
away from the ship and headed direct for the 
beach. 

(From the Second Officer^s statement) 
At approximately 1 1 145 A. M. ... I got Into 
the small boat at his command, with four of the 
crew, and we proceeded toward shore, but were 
stopped by the pilot cutter Philadelphia who told 
us that if we attempted to land we would be 
drowned. The Philadelphia then towed us into 
smooth water. . . . 



: A TRUE PIRATE TALE 123 

(From Captain Wingate's statement) 
Meanwhile the pilot boat was heading down on 
the ship, blowing her whistle to warn the ship 
of her danger. By this time the ship hoisted a 
signal " K. T. S.," which means ''Piracy." I or- 
dered my boat made ready at once when I saw the 
"Piracy" signal; five minutes later he started 
for the ship. At 12:20 I had called Keeper 
Lynch of the Lewes station telling him what I 
was going to do, and to meet me off the Point. 

(From the statement of Captain John S. Lynch of 
the Lewes Coast Guard Station) 

I and my crew launched our power lifeboat and 
started for the steamer. Before I could get to 
the steamer I saw the pilot boat towing in the 
steamer's skiff. The pilot boat let go of the 
skiff right off the Capes, and the occupants of 
the skiff started to row for shore. I called to 
them and they stopped. We went alongside, and 
I told them I would take the man ashore and 
save them the trouble. So he got into our boat. 

I then run off and picked up Captain Wingate, 
whose boat Is a rowboat, and we went alongside 
the steamer. I asked for the Captain of the 
steamer, and they told me he was going ashore in 
the sail pilot boat, so we run alongside the sail 



124 THROTTLED 

pilot boat, and I asked the Captain of the steamer 
to come along with me. He says, *' I will not. 
Not with that man in your boat. He's got fiwo, 
guns on him! " I then told him that I did not 
care how many guns he had as I was not afraid 
of him and he requested me to take the man 
ashore myself. Then this man Ernest Schiller 
began to throw his guns overboard: Schiller 
throwed one gun overboard, Captain Wingate, 
who had come aboard my boat throwed two over- 
board, and C. A. Jenkins throwed another one 
overboard, Schiller having thrown them into the 
bottom of the boat. He, Schiller, throwed a lot 
of cartridges overboard, and when we came ashore 
we searched him and took the balance of the car- 
tridges which he had on him and throwed them 
overboard. I then brought him up to the Customs 
Office and left him there. 

(From '^ Schiller* s '' statement) 
I am willing to go back to New York . . . im- 
mediately, and confess my guilt. I swear on 
oath that there are no bombs placed on the ship, to 
my knowledge. I simply made that statement 
to the Captain as a bluff. 

Thus this venturesome Russian, Hodson by 
birth, Schiller by preference, and German by con- 



A TRUE PIRATE TALE 125 

viction, who single-handed captured a steamship, 
returned to New York, thirty-six hours after he 
had left port. He walked the plank to the United 
States Penitentiary at Atlanta for life, for 
" piracy on the high seas/* 



VI 

ALONG THE WATERFRONT 



Sugar and Ships and Robert Fay 

Anyone familiar with the waterfront of a great 
port can appreciate its difficulties as an area to be 
policed. One of the busiest sections of the com- 
munity during the daytime, It is little frequented 
at night. In districts where you find few people 
you will rarely find lights, and where there are 
no lights you may well expect crime. The con- 
tours of the shoreline are irregular, following 
usually the original margins of solid ground lin- 
ing the natural harbor, and for every thorough- 
fare which can pass as a street there are a dozen 
or two alleys, footpaths, shadowy recesses and 
blind holes. Locks and keys and night watchmen 
will protect the land side of the piers, but from 
the water side entrance to any pier is easy, conceal- 
ment still easier, and flight no trick at all. 

If New York harbor In 19 14 had presented 

126 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 127 

the aspect of the same harbor of twenty years be- 
fore, I could hardly estimate the confusion which 
would have resulted from the coming of war. 
But there is probably no port in the world" which 
handles New York's volume of shipping with 
greater orderliness — I speak now from the stand- 
point of " law and order " rather than of the 
terminal facilities of the port. Its waterfront 
was physically clean and its longshore population, 
thanks to a competent police force, manageable. 
And yet, as Shakespeare said, " there are land rats 
and water rats — " 

From August, when war was declared and the 
Bomb Squad formed, through the fall of the year 
19 14, certain changes came over the waterfront. 
Great German liners of the Hamburg-American 
and North German Lloyd Lines, freighters of 
the Atlas Line, and a miscellany of other vessels 
flying the red-white-and-black lay idle in port when 
England's fleet blockaded the seaward channels. 
Some eighty German vessels were tied up at their 
piers. They dared not move, for Germany's only 
available convoys were in southern waters trying 
to dodge the British and prey upon shipping. 
The Hamburg-American Line and Captain 
Boy-Ed made several abortive attempts to supply 
the raiders, but the considerable merchant fleet 



128' THROTTLED 

caught in port by the war stayed in port. This 
dumped on the longshore population some thou- 
sands of ardent Boches. Meanwhile the great 
steamship lines owned by neutral and allied capi- 
tal entered on a period of activity such as they 
had never seen before. The first ships from 
abroad brought purchasing agents and European 
money to barter for American supplies, for imme- 
diate delivery. Any man who owned anything 
that bore a speaking likeness to a cargo-boat sud- 
denly found himself potentially wealthy. The 
whole United States began to pour into the New 
York waterfront a huge volume of supplies for 
the Allies — and for a time for Germany, via 
neutral Holland and Scandinavia — and out of 
the Hudson and East rivers flowed a steady, 
swelling current of this overseas trade. 

By the arrival of the year 19 15 the current was 
well under way. The piers were extremely busy 
and the facilities for trouble were multiplying. 
On January 3 there was an explosion on the steam- 
ship Orton in Erie Basin for which there was no 
apparent explanation. A month later a bomb 
was discovered in the cargo of the Hennington 
Court, but no one could say how it came there. 
Toward the end of February the steamship Carl- 
ton caught fire at sea — mysteriously. Two 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 129 

months passed, then two bombs were found In 
the cargo of the Lord Erne, We might have had 
a look at them, for that was the business of the 
Bomb Squad, if those who had found the bombs 
had not dumped them overboard rather hastily. 
A week later a bomb was found In the hold of 
the Devon City. Again no explanation. Nor 
any reasonable cause why the Cressington Court 
caught lire at sea on April 29. Our attention 
had been directed to each of these Instances, and 
we had investigated, and folders waited in the 
files for the reports which properly developed 
would lead to an arrest, and the sum total of 
those reports was — nothing. Then our luck 
turned for a moment. 

The steamship Kirkoswald, out of New York, 
laden with supplies for France, docked at Mar- 
seilles, and In four sugar-bags In her hold were 
found bombs. The French authorities com- 
mandeered them, and removed and analyzed the 
explosive charge. The police commissioner 
cabled at once to Marseilles requesting the re- 
turn of one of the bomb-cases, together with the 
bag In which It had been found, and an analysis 
of the contents. No answer. So he cabled again. 
The bomb-case then began a journey back to the 
United States, presented with the compliments of 



130 THROTTLED 

the Republic of France by M. Jusserand to the 
State Department at Washington, and forwarded 
in turn to Mayor Mitchel of New York. Our 
study disclosed that it was of a new type : a 
metal tube some ten inches long, divided into two 
compartments by a thin aluminum disc. One 
compartment had held potassium chlorate, a 
powerful explosive, and the other had contained 
sulphuric acid. The acid had been expected to 
eat through the thin disc separating the compart- 
ments, and explosion was to have followed, but 
for some reason it had failed. The metals were 
of good quality, and the workmanship was thor- 
ough. 

Here was our first clue on the case. Many 
policemen work on theory so determinedly that 
they exclude really important facts which do not 
fit comfortably into the theory. I have always 
believed in taking the evidence, building a theory 
upon it, and then trying to confirm or reject that 
theory as new facts appear. It was well that 
we followed such a policy here, for we had noth- 
ing but the bomb-tube itself to build our theory 
upon. What did it offer? First, we were for- 
tunate in having a bomb to study, for usually the 
fire following an explosion leaves no trace of Its 
origin. We had its construction and ingredients 




Copyright, by Underwood and Underii-uod, A. }'. 



Lieut. Robert Fay (on right) and Lieut. George D. Barnitz 

after Fav's arrest 




Copyright, by Underwood and Underwood 



From left to right: Fay, Daeche and Scholz, arraigned 

in Court 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 131 

as real, if vague, clues. Second, we knew that 
the Kirkoswald had carried supplies to France, 
and that all of the vessels on which bombs had 
been found or fires had broken out, had also been 
carrying supplies to the Allies. The list, by this 
time, had grown, for there were three more ship 
cases of fires or bombs in May, one in June, and 
five in July. Our primary theory was, therefore, 
that the bombs were made and placed on the 
vessels either by Germans or their paid agents. 

The Kirkoswald carried sugar. By examining 
the cargo-records of the other ships which had 
suffered near or actual mishaps, we found that 
they had also carried sugar, and that in the in- 
stances when fire broke out, the highly inflam- 
mable sugar gave a lot of trouble to the fire crew. 
The vigilance of the waterfront and harbor police 
had of course been keyed up to detect anything 
suspicious, but a bomb-planter does not often 
carry his bomb under a policeman's nose, and 
It seemed not unreasonable to suspect that the 
bombs had gone aboard with the sugar. So I 
went to a sugar refinery to see how sugar was 
made. 

I followed the process from the entry of the 
raw sugar to the bagging and shipping of the 
finished product. All of the sugar shipped 



132 THROTTLED 

abroad went In bags, which were sewn tight either 
by hand or by machinery. After considerable 
testing I found that It was fairly easy to open a 
hand-sewn bag and sew it up again without leav- 
ing evidence of what I had done; the machine 
stitches, however, resisted any intrusion, and were 
hard to duplicate once they had been taken out. 
I put that fact away for future reference and 
looked in on the shipping department, to learn 
there that the only two persons who could know of 
the destination of a consignment of sugar before 
it was actually loaded into a vessel's hold were 
the shipping clerk of the refinery and the captain of 
the lighter who took the sugar from the refinery to 
the ship. 

So we first paid court to the lighter captains 
and their aids. We followed shipments of sugar 
from the refinery doors to the lighters, saw the 
shipping clerk hand over his bill to the captain, 
saw the lighter pull out for a pier somewhere 
about the harbor, followed him to the pier, and 
watched the transfer of the cargo into the vessel's 
hold. If a lighterman knew that hand-sewn bags 
could be ripped open, and wished to Insert a bomb 
and close the bag again, he would have to do it 
on the way from the refinery to the pier — of 
that we were confident, for as soon as the lighter 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 133 

pulled up to the vessel's side the stevedores rushed 
the cargo into the hold, the hatches were sealed, 
and the cargo-checker, employed by the vessel, 
turned over to the lighter captain his receipt for 
the consignment. There was apparently no other 
time for tampering with the bags. 

How to watch the bags themselves from the ' 
refinery into the vessel was a troublesome problem. 
The river, during the daytime, is in constant traf- 
fic, and navigation for a cumbersome lighter in 
the river-paths Is about as comfortable as crossing 
Fifth Avenue on foot at rush hour. The river 
at night was comparatively free, and it was then 
that most of the lightering was done. A water- 
man can Identify the uncouth shapes of queer craft 
on dark waters, a landsman cannot, but we had 
to make the best of a bad bargain and chase the 
lighters In a motorboat, often diligently follow- 
ing a blinking light through the mist for hours to 
discover finally that it was on the wrong ship. 
Ships on a dark river are like timid spinsters in a 
dark street — they exhibit, perhaps through fear 
of collision, perhaps because ships are feminine, 
a strong suspicion of anything that approaches. 
Our barking motorboat advertised Itself half a 
mile away. If we drifted we lost our quarry. 
We tried to smuggle men aboard the lighters, 



134 THROTTLED 

but there were so many, and they were bound In 
so many different directions, that we were not 
manned for this. 

So passed June and July. It was a thankless 
task, and one which had its risks. Detective Senff 
fell Into the river one night when he was chasing 
a suspicious character around under a pier at the 
foot of West 44th Street and nearly drowned be- 
fore he could be pulled out. The case seemed 
to be getting no further than abstractions. 
Ashore, however, we learned that most of the 
lighter captains in the harbor were Germans, 
and in an effort to reduce the field we learned the 
names of the captains of the lighters which had 
most frequently visited the vessels on which fires 
had occurred. This took time and an exhaustive 
study of lighterage receipts, but It brought out 
the fact that In every case of a delivery of sugar 
to an outward bound vessel, the captain of the 
lighter had returned a full receipt — which ex- 
ploded the possibility that a lighterman might 
take a bag from one shipment, put a bomb In It, 
and add it to the next. 

I am happy now to say that we did not give up. 
We couldn't, for the ship fires were going right 
on. Increasing In frequency, and somebody was 
making bombs, for they continued to be found. 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 135 

On the assumption that a lighter captain who 
would place a bomb in a sugar-bag must first get 
the bomb, v/e began to shadow the captains, not 
only afloat but ashore, and then suddenly the case 
took a queer twist and our theory of German in- 
trigue got badly balled up. 

We followed certain lightermen to their homes, 
their drinking haunts, and their other places of 
business, and among their other places of busi- 
ness found the residence — on the lower West 
Side of Manhattan — of a man known to be a 
river pirate. That was enough for an arrest, 
and on August 27 we brought Mike Matzet, 
Ferdinand Hahn, Richard Meyerhoffer and Jene 
Storms, Germans, and John Peterson, Swede, 
to headquarters for examination. Matzet con- 
fessed that he, and " all the rest " of the lighter 
captains, as he expressed it, had been regularly 
stealing sugar from the consignments, and selling 
it to river pirates for % the market price, which 
allowed the pirates to re-sell it at % the market for 
400 per cent, clear profit. The pirates in a motor- 
boat would steal into the shadow of a lighter as 
she lay at her anchorage, take off a few bags, and 
slip away. We had seen such boats, but had 
never been able to close in and see what they 
were doing. The checkers who were supposed to 



136 THROTTLED 

render a true and just account of the number of 
bags which later passed Into the hatches of the 
ocean vessels were merely accomplices who shared 
in the profits when the stolen sugar was sold. 

There were no bombs on the captains (who 
presently went to jail) but they were all fully 
aware of the conditions along the waterfront, for 
one said to a pirate who was ''buying" sugar: 
"Take all you want — the damn ship will never 
get over anyway!" No bombs — and what If 
there had been? We were reasonably certain 
that the ships were being fired, but we did not 
know now whether It was for German reasons, or 
merely to efface the sugar thefts before the car- 
goes reached the other side of the ocean and were 
discovered by the consignees. The conviction of 
the thieves was not much consolation for the slow 
development of the case, and it fixed no guilt for 
bombs. 

But when you are bound on a long trip, and 
you have mislaid your ticket, it Is second nature 
to go through your pockets one by one, know- 
ing full well that it Is not In any of them, for you 
" just looked there." Then you find It In one 
of the pockets where you knew It could not be. 
Acting on a not dissimilar Instinct we began to 
retrace our steps from June to September, and 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 137 

to follow again the progress of sugar from the 
refinery to the hold of the outward bound steamer. 
Our theory that the bombs had some connection 
with the sugar was either to be proven or de- 
stroyed this time. It was in this more or less dull 
review that we made the acquaintance of the 
Chenangoes. 

They were nothing more romantic than fly- 
by-night stevedores whom the lighter companies 
engaged at the sugar wharves to load cargoes. 
They worked by the day, or by the job, there 
were always plenty loitering around to be hired, 
and they drew their pay and went their way. No 
one ever had to wonder who they were or where 
they came from, for a stout body was all the 
recommendation a Chenango required. They 
were a nondescript type of common labor, the 
same, I suspect, that carried materials for the 
Tower of Babel, and speaking almost as many 
tongues. The same face rarely appeared a sec- 
ond time to be hired — not that there was any- 
thing particularly unpleasant about the work, but 
rather that all work is repulsive to a Chenango. 
He is the hobo of labor and if the same man had 
been re-hired, no one would have noticed or cared. 
We paid such attention to them as their variety 
permitted — followed them to all the points of 



138 THROTTLED 

the compass, and watched them closely while they 
worked, to see whether any of them seemed to 
linger aboard in the cargo, or carried any sus- 
picious package. The wickedest thing we found 
was an occasional pint flask on the hip, which was 
no proof of any special criminal affairs. 

Ever since we had examined the Kirkoswald 
bomb we had had lines out to follow the sale of 
chlorate of potash and sulphuric acid — the in- 
gredients of the bomb. We examined reams of 
sales' records submitted by explosive and chemical 
manufacturers, traced dozens of reports from 
drug stores, and found nothing of consequence. 
Those two substances are widely and harmlessly 
used, and rarely purchased in small quantities by 
any individual whose intentions might excite sus- 
picion. Under our rigid city explosives' laws in- 
vestigation of purchases was facilitated for us, 
but all the facility in the world could not help the 
case without anything to investigate. So passed 
September and a part of October, and just about 
the time when the bomb case was growing dull 
and the ship fires which were constantly occurring 
had almost found us calloused, the French Gov- 
ernment, with traditional courtesy, helped us out 
again, and blew our sugar theory into many and 
small pieces. 




The Fay Bomb Materials 

Suit cases containing an atlas, two maps of the harbor, drawing instru- 
ments, tools, a wig and two false mustaches, a telescope 
bomb, and several packages of ingredients 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 139 

Captain Martyn, the French military attache 
in New York, telephoned to say that he thought we 
would be Interested in a man who he believed was 
trying to buy some explosive. What kind? 
Trinltro-toluol, or " TNT," one of the most 
violent propellants used In modern shell. Yes, 
we would be interested. 

A war exporter, Wettig by name, had told Cap- 
tain Martyn that a fellow with whom he shared 
office space had asked him to obtain a quantity of 
TNT — a small quantity, for trial purposes. 
The purchaser, who was known both as Paul Slebs 
and Karl Oppegaarde, and who lived at the Hotel 
Breslin, directed Wettig to deliver the material 
to a Jersey address and said he would then receive 
payment. On the axiom that a bomb in the hand 
is worth two In someone else's, we were Introduced 
to Wettig, and formulated with him a plan to 
follow the explosive. So on Thursday, October 
21, Detective Barnltz accompanied Wettig to a 
" dynamite store " at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 
where the latter bought some 25 pounds of TNT. 
The two returned to New York with their pack- 
age. We looked up Mr. Oppegaarde and asked 
him what he proposed to do with his purchase. 
He said he really hadn't the slightest Idea : an ac- 
quaintance of his, a wa,r broker named Max 



140 THROTTLED 

Breitung, had referred a certain Dr. Herbert 
Kienzle, a German clock-maker, to him as a likely 
person to obtain explosives. Dr. Kienzle had 
placed the order, had wanted It delivered at a 
garage In Main Street, Weehawken, to a man who 
bore the name of Fay, and who had assured 
Slebs that when he had It delivered he would be 
paid for his services. Further than that he knew 
nothing. Nobody seemed to know anything, al- 
though here was a considerable amount of vicious 
explosive In which five men were very much inter- 
ested. We spent the rest of that day In looking 
up what we could of the players In this little game 
of " passing the TNT " — from Kienzle to Brei- 
tung to Slebs to Wettlg to Fay. 

Six men were assigned to the case: Murphy, 
Walsh, Fenelly, Sterett, Coy and Barnitz, and 
they most admirably stayed on the job. On Fri- 
day Detectives Barnitz and Coy took the explosive 
to the Weehawken garage. Fay was not there, 
but a man who was there told the detectives he 
lived at 28 Fifth Street, so the men from the Bomb 
Squad and their package called at the boarding 
house where Fay lived. Again he was hot to be 
found, but our men had a chat with the landlady, 
who told them that Mr. Fay was a real nice gen- 
tleman who had lived there with his friend Mr. 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 141 

Scholz for a month, always paid his bills, sub- 
scribed to a magazine, and was working on inven- 
tions, or at least so she thought, because he used 
a table to draw plans on. Sociable, too — 

They left the TNT for him. I ought to re- 
mind the reader that it is harmless unless confined 
or heated, and cannot be properly exploded with- 
out a proper detonating charge. It may have 
been a bit rough on the boarding house, but we 
had gone to deliver the goods to Fay; Wettig had 
told him they would be delivered (though not by 
whom) and we had to carry out the plan even 
though Fay was not at home. 

At the same hour, across the Hudson Detec- 
tives Coy, Walsh and Sterett learned why Fay had 
not been receiving visitors, for they found him 
in Siebs's company in the Hotel Breslin. Effacing 
themselves until the interview was over, they 
tailed Fay to the West 42nd Street ferry, then 
across the river to Weehawken, up the long hill to 
the town, and to his garage at 212 Main Street. 
In the early evening an automobile emerged from 
the garage, driven by Fay and containing another 
passenger, and wound out of town in a northerly 
direction along the Palisades. Behind It was a 
police car. North of Weehawken a few miles 
where the country Is inhabited by Installment-plan 



142 THROTTLED 

*' villas," movlng-picture studios and scrub-oak 
trees, Fay stopped his car at the roadside and dis- 
appeared with the other man into the underbrush 
and then into the deeper woods. The police car 
waited until they returned, and followed them back 
to their boarding house, where the detectives took 
up a vigil outside. 

A New York policeman has not the power of 
arrest in another state, and it began to look as 
though we might have to make an arrest in Jersey, 
so Chief Flynn assigned Secret Service Agents 
Burke and Savage to the case and they joined 
forces with us Saturday morning. Detectives 
Barnitz, Coy, Walsh, Sterett, Fenelly and Murphy 
were watching the house in Weehawken. About 
noon Fay and his companion appeared, and got 
aboard a Grantwood street-car. The Bomb 
Squad followed at a discreet distance to the point 
where the men had dodged into the woods the 
night before. Barnitz, who was in command, sent 
Sterett and Coy in after them. But nature was 
against us, for the fallen leaves carpeting the 
woods crackled under foot, and to snap a twig 
was to shout one's presence through the clear air. 
Twice Fay turned sharply around and peered 
through the trees. The two detectives were 
nearly discovered on both occasions. They 



AJLONG THE WATERFRONT 143 

finally decided that It would be Impossible to ap- 
proach their men without alarming them, so they 
returned to the waiting automobile. The police 
party waited an hour or more, and then realized 
that Fay and his companion had evidently gone 
out the other side of the woods and so worked 
their way back to civilization. 

Barnltz thought and acted swiftly. He sent 
Sterett and Coy at once to New York to cover 
Dr. Klenzle, on the chance that Fay might get Into 
communication with him — it was a long chance, 
but the only one that offered, for the men were 
now lost to us. Barnltz, Murphy, Fenelly and 
Walsh returned to Weehawken to watch Fay^s 
house. For two hours nothing happened to In- 
terest them, and Barnltz was beginning to won- 
der whether he would ever see his quarry again 
when an express wagon drove up and stopped at 
28 Fifth Street. The driver presently trundled 
a trunk out of the house, swung it up Into his 
wagon and drove off. The police car idled along 
behind him for a mile or so through the Wee- 
hawken streets, and the wagon stopped at another 
house. While the driver was indoors this time, 
Fenelly, who was roughly dressed and light of 
foot, slipped up behind the wagon, vaulted into 
the back of it, took one look at the trunk and 



144 THROTTLED 

rejoined the others. " There's a plain calling- 
card on the trunk. It reads ' Walter Scholz/ " 
he said. Again the expressman headed a small 
parade, which terminated when the detectives saw 
him leave the trunk in a storage warehouse. Bar- 
nitz dared not follow It there for fear of arous- 
ing suspicion, and he figured that the trunk would 
probably not be removed during the week-end at 
least. The detectives once more returned to the 
boarding house and resumed their tedious watch. 
The evening passed, and there was no word 
either from Coy and Sterett or the lost men. 
Late fall evenings in Weehawken are cold. 
Some time after midnight two figures came up 
the street, and as they turned In to the boarding 
house we saw they were Fay and Scholz. Out 
of the shadows a moment later Sterett and Coy 
slipped up to the car — ■" I could have kissed 'em 
both," Barnitz said afterward. They had cov- 
ered the office of the Kienzle Clock Company at 
41 Park Place, picked up Dr. Kienzle as he left 
the office, tailed him until five in the afternoon, 
and then saw him enter the lobby of the Equitable 
Building at 120 Broadway — where he met Fay 
and Scholz ! The men conversed for a few mo- 
ments, and Fay excused himself. He went to a 
(telephone booth and closed the door. Sterett 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 145 

went Into the next booth. Through the thin parti- 
tion he heard Fay call the garage, ask whether a 
package had been delivered to him there, then 
say "it hasn't, eh?" and hang up the receiver. 
He rejoined Scholz and Kienzle and the three 
went to a Fulton Street restaurant to dine. The 
detectives went to the restaurant but did not dine, 
and when the Germans left, and Kienzle parted 
from the others, they tailed Fay and Scholz to 
Grand Central Palace, saw them appropriate two 
young women, dance with them, pledge them in a 
few drinks, and finally leave them and return to 
Weehawken. 

That trunk episode made us uneasy. It might 
have meant that they had been frightened and were 
going to disappear, and It certainly signified their 
intention of moving. We decided to force the 
issue, and accordingly in the small hours of Sun- 
day morning we directed Wettig, of whom, of 
course, Fay had no suspicions, to call at Fay's 
house later In the forenoon to arrange to test 
the TNT. From the automobile, which was 
parked at the street-corner some distance from the 
house, the detectives saw Wettig enter, and in a 
few moments saw him come out-of-doors with Fay 
and Scholz. They strolled to the street-car line, 
allowed two cars to pass unsignalled, and then, 



146 THROTTLED 

suddenly, hailed a third. It had closed doors, and 
when Murphy, Fenelly, and Coy, seeing the men 
climbing aboard, tried to reach the car themselves, 
the doors had slammed in their faces and the car 
was on its way. Somewhere in the shuffle Walsh 
had been mislaid — he had been last seen up the 
block covering an alley which led back of the 
boarding house. There was no time to pick him 
up, and the automobile followed the car to Grant- 
wood and the now familiar woods. At times the 
car was out of sight of the pursuers, and they fully 
expected to lose their men again. But from far 
in the rear they saw the car stop opposite the 
woods. The doors snapped open, and the first 
person to set foot on the ground was Walsh. The 
second and third were Fay and Scholz, and the 
last, Wettig. Walsh had seen them climb aboard 
in Weehawken, and had promptly sprinted for the 
next corner ahead, where he caught the carl 
That was good shadowing technique. 

The Germans slipped into the protection of the 
underbrush immediately. Barnitz was not dis- 
posed to let them get away again, so he spread 
out his forces so as to follow the party and finally 
surround it, and the Bomb Squad, the Secret Serv- 
ice and two members of the Weehawken police 
entered the wood and wove a circle about their 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 147 

victims. As they closed In they saw Fay enter a 
little shack in the depth of the brush, and bring out 
a package, from which he took a pinch of some 
material and placed it on a rock. With a nice new 
hammer he dealt the rock a sharp blow, there was 
a loud report, and the handle snapped in his 
hand. The detectives closed in at once, and 
Barnltz said, " You're under arrest! " 

*' Who is In charge of you all? " Fay asked. 

*' I am," Barnitz replied. 

*' Well, I will tell you that I am not going to be 
placed under arrest," Fay announced. " If I 
am, great people will suffer ! You will surely have 
war. It cannot be — it Is impossible. I will 
give you any amount of money if you will let me 

go." 

This was good news, not for Its financial con- 
tent but because we had no previous evidence 
against this man Fay save that he had TNT In his 
possession. Here he was, trying to confirm our 
suspicions. 

" How much will you give me? " Barnltz par- 
leyed. 

" All you want — any amount I " 

*' Fifty thousand?" 

*' Yes, fifty thousand. If you want It." 

*' Got it with you? " Barnitz asked Instantly. 



148 THROTTLED 

" No, I haven't got it all, but I can get it. 
I'll pay you a hundred dollars now as a guaran- 
tee, and I'll give you the balance at noon to- 
morrow." 

Barnitz called two of the other men. " Get 
this," he said, and turning to Fay: "All right, 
where's your money? " Fay paid him. Then 
they took him to the Weehawken headquarters, 
guilty at least of attempted bribery, and Barnitz 
turned in the cash as Exhibit A. 

We suspected that he had something more than 
the possession of explosives to conceal, and so 
he had, for a search of his rooms and the garage 
brought to light the parts for a number of thor- 
oughly ingenious mechanical contrivances which, 
although they were of a new type, we immediately 
recognized as bombs. In a packing case at the 
storage warehouse were four bombs finished and 
ready to filL He had apparently intended to 
manufacture them on a large scale, for in addi- 
tion to his trial quantity of TNT Fay had twenty- 
five sticks of dynamite, 450 pounds of chlorate 
of potash, four hundred percussion caps, and two 
hundred bomb cylinders. Apparently, too, he had 
German sympathies, for we found in his rooms a 
regulation German army pistol, loaded. The dis- 
covery of a chart of New York harbor, and the 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 149 

information, which we soon got, that he had a 
motorboat in a slip opposite West 42nd Street, 
pointed the finger of guilt toward the waterfront 
— which after all those months of waiting was the 
direction in which we were most interested. 

Fay told his story. He was a lieutenant of 
the German Army, detached for special secret 
service. He ascribed his detachment from his 
command to his own brilliant realization, as he 
was on the fighting front in France, that if all the 
American shells that were being fired at him from 
French seventy-fives and British eighteen-pounders 
could be sunk before they reached France they 
would not cause his countrymen so much annoy- 
ance, and also that pushed to its capacity that 
idea would probably influence the outcome of the 
war. The fact is that Fay's career, training, edu- 
cation, languages and character were well known 
to the secret service in Berlin, and that when they 
wanted to assign a reliable and desperate man to 
Captain von Papen in New York, they sent him. 
They knew that Fay had spent years In America, 
and that he was trained in mechanics. They gave 
him $4,000 and a plan of campaign, and said: 
*' Go west." 

It was natural that when he landed he should 
seek out his brother-in-law, Walter Scholz, who 



150 THROTTLED 

was working as gardener on an estate in Con- 
necticut. It was natural, too, that when he set 
about getting supplies for his bombs he should 
call on Dr. Kienzle, who made clock machinery, 
for Dr. Kienzle had already written to the Ger- 
man secret service in Berlin recommending just 
such work as Fay had come to undertake. When 
he came to require explosives, it was only natural 
that Kienzle should refer him to his friend Max 
Breitung, with the result which we have seen, 
and naturally Paul Daeche, who was a good friend 
of both Kienzle and Breitung (he had tried to 
return to Germany with both of them on the 
Kronprinzessin Cecilie when she put out of New 
York and put in to Bar Harbor in late July, 19 14) 
— naturally Daeche was interested in Fay's pro- 
jects and devices, and helped him v/ith them. 
Daeche was one of those doubtful Germans who 
had come to America to " study business meth- 
ods "— in short a commercial spy, willing to 
make a living. 

Fay was crestfallen after his arrest. He wor- 
ried, first, over what his government would think 
of him when he had left home promising that not 
a single munitions' ship would leave New York 
and reach the Allies; second, because revealing his 
commission to destroy those ships would place 




Cofyright, by Undtrwood and Underwood, N. Y. 

Lieutenant Fay's Motor Boat 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 151 

Germany in a bad light with other neutral na- 
tions; third, for fear he might implicate the Im- 
perial German Embassy at Washington. He pro- 
tected the Embassy for a time, and then admitted 
that his plans had only been waiting a word from 
von Papen and Boy-Ed for consummation. His 
mines were all ready to be set, and the attaches, 
whom he had met, had not given the word. All 
his clever craftsmanship had gone for nothing. 

The bombs were so constructed that they might 
be attached under water to the rudder-post of a 
vessel as she lay at her pier. Inside the bomb case 
was a clockwork, so poised as to fire two rifle 
cartridges into a chamber of ninety pounds of 
TNT. Lieut. Robert S. Glasburn, of Fort Wads- 
worth, who testified at Fay's trial, is my author- 
ity for the statement that the government requires 
only 100 pounds of TNT, exploded at a depth of 
fifteen feet under water, to destroy a dreadnought; 
Fay's ninety pounds would have torn the rudder 
out like a toothpick and ripped away the entire 
after part of the vessel. The helmsman of the 
vessel himself was unconsciously to have set the 
bomb off, for the clockwork was geared to a wire 
attached to the rudder Itself In such a v»^ay that each 
normal swing of the rudder would wind up the 
mechanism until it fired the cartridge. The 



152 THROTTLED 

bomb chamber was fitted with rubber gaskets so 
that no water would be admitted before the charge 
had done its work. Fay was a skilful hand, and 
had done the assembling himself. Scholz bought 
the materials at various machine shops about New 
York, Kienzle supplied the mechanisms and ap- 
proved the finished product. Breitung contri- 
buted 400 pounds of chlorate of potash to make 
a German holiday, and Daeche just hung around 
and helped everybody. 

Fay knew it was easy to approach a pier from 
the water-side, for he had spent hours fishing idly 
in the river to determine that very fact. Just as 
soon as the military attache said the word, he and 
Scholz were to put out into the darkness of the 
river in their fast motorboat and visit ten ships 
sailing for England and France, donning a diver's 
suit, and attaching a bomb to each rudder. He 
would first slip alongside the police patrol boats, 
whose haunts he knew, and steal the guns from 
them, counting on the swiftness of his own craft 
to get away from pursuers. He even entertained 
the possibility of visiting the British patrol cruis- 
ers outside the harbor to fix bombs to them — 
though hardly seriously, I suspect. He had made 
a different type of bomb, resembling a telescope, 
in which the carefully timed dissolution of a white 



ALONG THE WATEl^FRONT 153 

powder would release a firing pin on a large quan- 
tity of potassium chlorate. This type he pro- 
posed to smuggle Into the cargo. When he had 
created such a reign of terror in New York har- 
bor that no ship dared leave, he would go to 
Boston and Philadelphia and do likewise, then to 
Chicago and Buffalo to paralyze lake shipping, and 
thence to New Orleans and San Francisco and 
home by way of New York or Mexico. It was a 
great pity, he said, that he had been arrested, for 
this program had been cancelled. He wished he 
had got word to start sooner. He had had a 
few bombs ready for some time. Then there 
came a slack period, and he sent Daeche to Bridge- 
port on a little side mission for Germany: to get 
some dum-dum bullets. These Fay Intended to 
forward to Berlin through von Papen to support 
a protest from Germany to the United States that 
we were shipping dum-dum bullets to the Allies. 
We were not, naturally, but that did not prevent 
his bringing back a few bullets with the jackets 
carefully notched by a German agent in Bridge- 
port. 

We had heard enough of what he had In- 
tended to do, and of his disappointment. What 
had he accomplished? What ships had he blown 
up? Was he responsible for the five fires in the 



154 THROTTLED 

hold of the Craigside on July 24? No. Did he 
make the bombs found on the Arabic on July 27 ? 
Did he cause the fires on the Assuncion de Lar- 
rinagay the Rotterdam or the Santa Anna, and 
did he put a bomb aboard the WiUistonf He did 
not, he assured me. 

I showed him the Kirkoswald bomb. 

*' Did you ever see that? '^ 

" No," he answered. 

''Didn't you make that?" 

*' I did not," he replied, and laughed. *' That's 
a joke. I see now why they sent me over to this 
country — they wanted someone to make bombs 
that would do some damage. That's crude 
work." 

His answer was truthful. We had to admit it 
for there v/as absolutely no evidence to connect 
him with any specific act outside his confession, 
and we had to find comfort in the fact that he 
was guilty at least of having intended to con- 
tinue the reign of terror along the wharves. 
Bombs had been found or fires had broken out 
on no less than twenty-two vessels bound out of 
New York up to the time we closed on Fay — and 
not one was his prey. He was tried with Scholz 
and Daeche. The only law then applying to 
his case, and the one under which he was tried, 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 155 

charged him with '' conspiracy to defraud the in- 
surance underwriters " who had Insured cargoes 
on certain ships. When the charge was read to 
him, Fay innocently asked: "What are under- 
writers? " He found out. Fay went to Atlanta 
for eight years, Scholz for six, and Daeche for 
four. Kienzle and Breltung were not brought to 
trial and after we went to war were Invited to 
join various other Germans in an Internment 
camp. Fay had been at Atlanta a month when 
he escaped. German friends gave him clothes 
and helped him to Baltimore, where Paul Koenig 
met him and paid him $450, with injunctions to 
go to San Francisco and get more. For some 
reason the fugitive feared that there was a plot 
against his life In San Francisco, although he had 
protected the " great people," so Instead of going 
west he fled immediately to Mexico. From there 
he fled to Spain, and it was not until the sum- 
mer of 19 1 8 that he was caught there. 

He was a bold and important criminal In his 
field, and we were glad to have brought him in. 
He was not the one we wanted most, not if our 
sugar theory was sound. The pursuit of Fay had 
certainly scared that theory up an alley. It was 
high time we got out of the alley and back into 
Main Street. 



yii 

ALONG THE WATERFRONT 

II 
^^ Damn Him, Rintelen! ^^ 

The pursuit of Robert Fay unearthed what 
trial lawyers delight in calling " not one scintilla 
of evidence " that he had actually set fire to a 
ship. Fay was punished for what he intended 
to do and not for any real achievement for the 
German cause. 

Yet the thought persisted in our minds that 
he knew who was making and placing ship bombs. 
He professed ignorance. *' I do know this 
much," he said, after a long session of futile 
questioning, " I do know that a certain man paid 
another man $10,000 to make those bombs. I 
won't tell you who he is, because I think he is now 
a prisoner in the Tower of London, and he might 
get into more trouble. You can make what you 
like out of that." 

We made this out of it — that the prisoner 

156 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 157 

then in the Tower to whom Fay referred was 
probably Franz Rintelen. He was a German of 
prominent station who had had a vision quite 
like Fay's — a vision of interrupting American 
shipping, and so damming the flood of war sup- 
plies. In early 19 15 he had come to America 
equipped with plenty of authority and a bank 
credit limited only by the resources of the Ger- 
man Empire, and had spent six months here try- 
ing to exercise that authority and spend the money 
in numerous ways. He had tried to buy rifles of 
the American government, he had fostered peace 
demonstrations, promoted strikes, lobbied for an 
embargo on munitions and made himself busily 
useless in numerous other ways, only to sail for 
home in the fall of the year — and fall into 
the hands of the British. 

But the charges which I have just cited, and 
which are now fully confirmed against this man, 
were not then known to us, and Fay's tip was 
too ambiguous to help us at the moment. In- 
stead of ceasing after his arrest, the fires con- 
tinued. The day after we caught Fay in the 
woods the steamer Rio Lages which had sailed a 
few days previously took fire out at sea. A week 
later a blaze started in the hold of the Euterpe, 
The Rochambeau, of the French line, caught fire 



158 THROTTLED 

at sea on November 6, and the next day there was 
an explosion aboard the Ancona, The Tyning- 
ham suffered two fires on her voyage east during 
early December. There was a maddening cer- 
tainty about it all that suggested that every ship 
that left port must have nothing in her hold ex- 
cept hungry rats, parlor matches, oily waste and 
free kerosene. Never in the history of the port 
had so many marine fires occurred in a single 
year. Marine insurance was away up and our 
patience was away down. 

The steamship companies put on special de- 
tails of guards to watch the vessels from the mo- 
ment they entered port until they sailed again. 
We resumed patrolling the river in various dis- 
guises. Fay's swift motorboat had disappeared, 
but there were plenty of others, and the men of 
the Bomb Squad suffered real hardship in all 
sorts of inclement weather. It seemed as though 
every item of cargo was watched as it passed 
into the hold, and every stranger about the piers 
carefully followed, but there was absolutely noth- 
ing to excite suspicion. So we returned to our 
sugar theory and the Chenangoes. 

I mentioned the fact that they were a floating 
tribe in more senses than one, and that the same 
man rarely came back twice for employment. A 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 159 

few familiar faces, however, could occasionally be 
spotted In the crowd at work loading the lighters. 
We made it our business to study these steady 
workers and found them for the most part a harm- 
less lot of Scandinavians. 

Those who came, worked once, and vanished, 
were of all nationalities, with a considerable Ger- 
man representation. Some of them used to come 
from Hoboken, and by a process of elimination 
we found that certain of the Hoboken delega- 
tion were sailors from the Idle North German 
Lloyd and Hamburg-American ships. We fol- 
lowed them and asked enough questions about 
them to learn the entire history of any civilized 
people, but nothing In the form of legal evidence 
resulted. A friend who knew the methods taught 
in the Wilhelmstrasse for destroying property said 
it would be futile for us to follow those men 
anyway, for the destroying agent himself rarely 
knows the men higher up, the real conspirators. 
So it began to look as if even the arrest of a 
guilty Chenango would not supply the background 
necessary to picture the bomb system in its en- 
tirety. 

On one of the early days of 19 16 Detectives 
Barth, Corell and Senff reported for duty and 
were assigned to Hoboken. They were in- 



i6o THROTTLED 

structed to hang about the restaurants, saloons and 
hotels where the officers and petty-officers from 
the German ships were accustomed to gather, and 
posing as confidential German agents they were to 
fish about for whatever might take their bait. All 
three men are fine Americans of German descent, 
with an excellent command of the German lan- 
guage, so they got on well with the longshore 
folk they met in the " stubes " of Hoboken. 
They occasionally suggested in a vague way that 
they Were the picked servants of the Kaiser, and 
aroused some Interest and no suspicion among 
their new acquaintances. Every man has more 
or less desire to be a " secret service man " and 
in looking back on the German antics In Amer- 
ica during the war I think one may attribute as 
much of their activity to the dramatic instinct, as 
to their cupidity or their real patriotic zeal. 
(Paul Koenig is an exaggerated example of what I 
mean.) And so it was with those to whom the 
three Bomb Squad men talked: a nod here, and 
a wink there, a whisper and a wag of the head, 
and they took on some importance. 

Their reward came when a German whom 
Barth had picked up suggested quietly that he 
knew a man who had been doing work for the 
government (German) and wouldn't Barth like 



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Franz Rintelen 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT i6i 

to meet him? Barth would. So with some cere- 
mony Barth was introduced as one of von Bern- 
storff's special agents to a funny little old man 
who looked like a cartoon of the late Prussian 
eagle. He was Captain Charles von Klelst of 
Hoboken. The three lunched together in Hahn's 
restaurant, In Park Row, New York, and von 
Klelst found Barth agreeable. He was very glad 
to meet a real agent, for he had a grudge 
against a fellow over In Hoboken who said he 
was a member of the German secret service. 

" You can't be too careful of those fellows," 
Barth said. " There are a lot of fakes around. 
What's he done to you? " 

" This Scheele, he has a laboratory, where 
he has been doing work, making some things. I 
was his superintendent now for a long time, and 
he owes me several hundred dollars, but he does 
not pay me. I think von Igel ought to know 
about it, and perhaps Captain von Papen him- 
self." 

*' So do I," said Barth. " I'll see that It gets 
to him. What was it you were doing over 
there?" 

Von Klelst was a chemist. Dr. Walter T. 
Scheele had been employing him In his laboratory 
at 1 133 Clinton Street, Hoboken, in a factory 



1 62 THROTTLED 

which was ostensibly for the manufacture of agri- 
cultural chemicals. The real business they tran- 
sacted was the manufacture of bombs. Ernest 
Becker, the chief electrician of the North Ger- 
man Lloyd liner Friedrich der Grosse, and Carl 
Schmidt, her chief engineer, had made the con- 
tainers out of sheet metal. These Becker had 
delivered to Scheele, and up in the laboratory the 
containers had been filled with explosive. Becker 
would come then and take them away, and the 
bombs had been used to great advantage, von 
Kleist continued, in harassing the shipping. But 
what good did it do him, he asked Barth, if he got 
no paay for it? 

" You wait," returned the " secret agent." 
" I'll get you fixed up. I know a man who is 
close to von Igel, and I'll have him meet you. 
If what you say is true, you certainly have some- 
thing coming to you. Wait till I get this other 



man." 



A few days passed. Then von Kleist came 
again to Hahn's restaurant, and was introduced to 
*' Herr Deane," who Barth said spoke no German, 
but was a good man in spite of the handicap. A 
trace of suspicion crossed the old chemist's face, 
and Barth hastened to add: "We have to use 
all kinds of people to fool these stupid Yankees, 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 163 

see?" This bit of heavy satire reassured von 
Kleist, and he found Deane a likable person, who 
seemed Interested in his case against Scheele. 
He went over the ground again. " If you want 
any more proof I'll show you," he concluded. 
" Come to my house." " Deane " (who votes 
under the name of George D. Barnitz, of the 
Bomb Squad) joined Barth and accompanied von 
Kleist to his house at 1121 Garden Street, Ho- 
boken, and out of the muddy back yard the old 
man dug up an empty bomb container, almost an 
exact duplicate of the '^ Kirkoswald'^ bomb! 
" There is one of them — and I have filled dozens 
like that," he said. 

" Let's go for a ride," Barth suggested. *' We 
can go down to Coney Island and have supper — 
the hotel has opened up — and we'll talk things 
over." The old man felt very amiable towards 
his new friends, and was a talkative and appre- 
ciative guest. They dined at the Shelburne and 
later Barnitz wrote out a statement of von Kleist's 
services as the latter outlined them. " This is 
just for the sake of regularity, you understand. 
I have to have a written report to give to the 
chief, or else you won't get yours. You can sign 
this as your formal statement." 

" All right," von Kleist agreed, and signed. 



1 64 THROTTLED 

" How long do you think it will be before I could 
get some money? " 

" Oh, don't worry about that part of it," Barth 
said. " I tell you what we'll do. We'll all three 
go up to see the chief now — I want him to meet 
you anyhow, and you dan supply any more facts 
that we may not have down." 

So they came up to my office — ■ not von Igel's. 
Barnitz and Barth said his expression changed 
when he entered headquarters and knew he had 
been betrayed. He said, " I see now why you 
have been so good to me." 

The prisoner was docile. He said he knew he 
was caught and he wanted to help us round up the 
rest. I showed him the Kirkoswald bomb, and 
told him where it had been found. *' Yes," he 
said, " Captain Steinburg and Captain Bode came 
to the laboratory after they saw in the paper 
that the bomb had been found in Marseilles and 
they gave Dr. Scheele the devil because it had 
not gone off. It was supposed to explode within 
jFour days, but it didn't explode in twelve." 
" How many did you make? " I asked. " I don't 
know how many," the prisoner answered. The 
ones that were put on the Inchmoor and the Lank- 
dale went off all right, and there were two fires 
on the Tyningham, " I gave one box of thirty 




ienry Barth, U. S. Army, who posed as the German Secret 
Service agent in the von Rintelen ship bomb cases 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 165 

of them to two Irishmen from New Orleans, 
O'Reilly and O'Leary. They took them down 
there to set fire to ships with them." 

*' Did you give the rest to Becker? " 

*' Yes. And he gave them to Captain Wol- 
pert. Wolpert Is superintendent of the piers of 
the Atlas Line over in Hoboken. Captain Bode, 
he Is also a superintendent, for the Hamburg- 
American Line. Captain Stelnburg I don't know 
much about, but he Is in Germany now." 

I thanked him for his information, and asked 
him if he would tell me everything about the plot, 
from Its beginning up to the moment. He said 
he would; that he was going to help the United 
States now. I excused myself for a moment and 
left the room. 

Von Kleist saw an electrician in a rough shirt 
and overalls repairing the lights In the room, and 
struck up a conversation with him. The elec- 
trician's English carried a slight German accent, 
and von Kleist said: 

''Sle sind deutsch, nicht wahr?" (YouVe 
German?) 

" Ja," replied the workman. 

Still using the mother tongue the prisoner asked 
the workman to do him a favor. " Deliver these 
notes for me, will you? I can't go out of here, 



1 66 THROTTLED 

and I would like to send word to some people." 
And he wrote on two messages, one addressed 
to Wolpert and Bode, the other to Schmidt and 
Becker. The substance of both was the same: 
"Beat It — I'm pinched." Detective Senff had 
been disguised as an electrician and stationed In 
the room for the express purpose of getting any 
statement the prisoner made — a practice not 
usually necessary, but this was a serious case. 
Evidently von Kleist's profession of transferred 
loyalty to the United States v/as only a scrap of 
paper. We locked him up. 

That night Walsh and Murphy watched Cap- 
tain Bode's house in a New Jersey suburb, while 
Sterett and Fenelly covered Wolpert's house 
nearby. Both men reported at their respective 
piers for work the next morning, and both were 
invited by the detectives to come over to head- 
quarters " to consult with us In a little water- 
front investigation we were carrying on." Senff 
went to the North German Lloyd piers to call on 
Becker. The guard at the pier-head put through 
a telephone connection, and Senff told Becker he 
wanted to see him on an urgent matter. Pres- 
ently Becker appeared at the pier gates, and 
through the bars Senff whispered: "Von Kleist 
wants to see you. Trouble - — " Becker returned 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 167 

in an Instant with his hat and came to headquar- 
ters. A little later In the day the net caught 
Schmidt, and after a year and a half of waiting 
we had rounded up In twenty-four hours five prom- 
ising prisoners. 

Von Klelst, we knew, was not altogether relia- 
ble; Bode was positively robust In his denial of any 
knowledge of the affair. Becker, a thin blond 
youth, made a complete confession. Yes, he had 
made the bomb containers — several hundred of 
them, under Schmidt's orders. He had filled 
them with chlorate of potash and sulphuric acid 
at the Scheele laboratory and had seen Captain 
Wolpert take them away. At that moment Wol- 
pert, a hulking red figure, who had been convers- 
ing fairly freely, shut up tight, and refused to an- 
swer further questions. Becker acknowledged 
that he had made the Kirkoswald bomb, and 
added that the later cases were larger than that. 

" Captain Wolpert," I said, " don't you think 
you're doing Germany more harm than good by 
doing this sort of thing? " 

" Damn it ! " he exploded. " I gave it up June 
first. But you've got to do what those bull-headed 
fellows tell you, haven't you? " 

"Did you know Robert Fay, Captain?" I 
asked. 



1 68 THROTTLED 

" Yes — I met him one time in Schimmel's office 
with Rintelen," he replied. 

'' You m^ean von Rintelen? " I asked, using the 
aristocratic prefix which Rintelen had assumed. 

" No! " bellowed Wolpert. '' Not von, damn 
him — Rintelen! '' 

The result of our first examination of the four 
was the arrest of Carl Schmidt, chief engineer of 
the Friedrich der Grosse, and three of his assist- 
ants, Georg Praedel, William Paradies and Fried- 
rich Garbade. We covered the laboratory, but 
Dr. Scheele had fled, to Florida. There he re- 
ceived a telegram telling him it was safe for him 
to return to New York. He had traveled as far 
as Baltimore when another telegram informed him 
of the arrests, and he fled to Cuba, and It was 
March of 191 8 before he was arrested by the 
Havana police and extradited to New York. 
The laboratory was in a secret room on the top 
floor of the factory, accessible only through a 
trap door, and the trap itself was pierced with 
eyeholes so that anyone at work Inside could see 
who was outside. We found a rich store of ex- 
plosive and incendiary chemicals — all the in- 
gredients of the bombs, which Lieutenant Busby 
brought back as evidence. Scheele was a finished 
chemist, and a German spy of 23 years' standing. 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 169 

It had never occurred to him that von Klelst 
would squeal for want of money. " How good 
a German are you?" he had asked von Kleist 
when he engaged him in March, 19 15. (The 
first project of the two was to saturate fertilizer 
with lubricating oil and thus smuggle the oil into 
Germany.) " I'm as good a German as you ever 
pretended to be," von Kleist answered. " You 
are not," said Scheele, '' or you wouldn't have 
taken out naturalization papers here. I didn't 
do that." '' Well, I couldn't have got my cap- 
tain's sailing license if I hadn't," said von Kleist. 

Loyalty to Germany alone had not satisfied the 
appetite of von Kleist, for he had caught a glimpse 
that night of the check for $10,000, signed " Han- 
sen " which Scheele proudly waved as evidence of 
what Germany thought of his ship-destroying abil- 
ity. In the Austrian-subsidized Transatlantic 
Trust Company, where von Rintelen had deposited 
a large amount of money on his arrival from 
Germany, he had an account In the name of Han- 
sen. Here then was the explanation of Fay's re- 
mark about his friend who was a prisoner in Eng- 
land. 

So far, so good. We knew that Becker, 
Schmidt and the other engineers had made the 
bombs, and that Becker and Scheele had filled 



1 70 THROTTLED 

them. On the evidence the four were convicted; 
Becker and von Kleist were sent to Atlanta for 
two years, and the other four to the penitentiary 
for six months. We were satisfied, but could not 
prove, that Wolpert and Bode had disposed of 
the bombs where they would do the most damage. 
They refused naturally to convict themselves, were 
admitted to bail of $25,000, which was provided 
by friendly Germans, and were interned when we 
went to war. The four assistants served their 
terms and then were extended the privileges of 
internment camps as dangerous enemy aliens. 

So far, so good, but the snake was not yet 
dead — we had only cut off a section of his tail. 
To be sure, he could not get about with his former 
vigor. The ship fires, which had continued 
through February, stopped, and one can count on 
his fingers the fires that broke out on ships after 
that date. Our theory had served its purpose — 
but who were the men higher up ? 

When Paul Koenig had been taken into custody 
in late December, 19 15, we had found in his house 
in West 94th Street an address book containing 
some hundreds of names of folk with whom he 
apparently did business. The memorandum book 
is mentioned elsewhere in this volume in detail, 
but the present case may show just what specific 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 171 

use we made of the catalogue of spies which the 
obliging Koenig had left In our hands. Among 
other entries was this : 

"Boniface during the day — 3396 Worth 
— ask for 

Boniface at night 1993 Chelsea — Never 
home until 10:30 p. M." 

We had gone systematically through the book, 
checking up our knowledge of each person men- 
tioned, in order to see whether the trail of Koenig, 
von Papen, Boy-Ed and the Hamburg-American 
interests might not lead us to other unexpected 
outrages, and so we were seeking this Boniface 
who was ''never home until 10:30 P.M." For 
months he proved elusive, but not long after the 
arrest of the Hoboken bomb-manufacturers we 
located a certain Bonford Boniface. 

He had only a single room for lodgings, and 
we called there one day while he was known to 
be elsewhere and made a careful examination of 
its contents. Our first signal that Boniface might 
be off-color was the discovery of a file of clippings 
from newspapers describing the arrest of von 
Klelst and his crew. Apparently he was inter- 
ested in German bombs. There was no evidence 
of the reason for his interest, however, and the de- 



172 THROTTLED 



lectives were about to 'leave the room as they 
had found it when they ran across two letters 
signed " Karl Schimmel," one postmarked Buenos 
Aires and one from Holland. Both were color- 
less messages asking how fortune was treating 
Boniface. 

Now a cat may look at a king, and a man may 
receive friendly notes from the Argentine and 
Holland without molestation, but I recalled some- 
thing of this name Karl Schimmel. He had 
come under suspicion before, first, when the so- 
called " Do-Do Chemical Company " of 395 
Broadway had applied to the fire department for 
permission to store dynamite on the premises of 
its executive, Karl Schimmel, at 127 Concord Ave- 
nue, the Bronx. The application had been de- 
nied, and the fire department had asked the Bomb 
Squad to look up the Do-Do Chemical Company 
and its officers. It had no factory, no visible busi- 
ness, and as we presently found out no Karl Schim- 
mel, for he became alarmed at our investigations 
and fled to Mexico, and South America, and then, 
with the aid of Count Luxburg he made his way 
back to Germany. Again, Wolpert had spoken 
of having met Fay in Schimmel's office with 
Rintelen — but Wolpert would not talk. There 
;was a reasonable margin of doubt in our minds 



1 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 173 

of Schimmers behavior — enough to warrant 
Earth's going to Boniface and asking him to come 
to headquarters. 

Schimmel, Boniface told us, had employed him 
for a time at $25 a week. And what had he done 
in return? Nothing more than provide Schim- 
mel with a list of weekly sailings of all steam- 
ships leaving New York for Europe, together 
with a description of their cargoes. Why had 
Schimmel, a lawyer, been interested in sailings and 
cargoes? Boniface said he did not know. How 
had Boniface compiled the list? At first, he said, 
by scouting along the waterfront, picking up scraps 
of conversation here and there and keeping an 
observant eye on the trucks bound for the piers. 
Pier-guards began to notice him a trifle too at- 
tentively, the waterfront was too many miles long, 
twenty-five dollars a week was only twenty-five 
dollars a week, and Boniface, it must be remarked, 
was racially thrifty. So he adopted the much 
simpler expedient of buying each morning a copy 
of the New York Herald, a newspaper which pays 
some attention to shipping, net cost in those days 
one cent, copying sailing dates, hours and destina- 
tions from its columns, and conjuring the cargoes 
out of his imagination. 

Where had he delivered his reports? To 



174 THROTTLED 

Schlmmel In his office at 51 Chambers Street. 
Whom had he seen there? Why, Rintelen, once, 
but he didn^t know what his business there was. 
Another time a man named Herman Ebling. 
(Ebllng, it developed later, had been directed by 
Wolpert, who had had his orders from a Cap- 
tain Steinburg, to take a tube of glanders germs 
and a dipping stick, seek out the wharves where 
horses were being shipped abroad for artillery 
and transport, and insert the germ-soaked stick 
into the nostrils of every third horse he could 
reach, In order that a serious epidemic might 
presently break out. Ebling claims he threw the 
tube overboard without fulfilling his mission.) 
Where was Ebling? Boniface professed not to 
know. Whom else had he seen? Well, there 
was another German lawyer, Martin Illsen, coun- 
sel for the New Yorker Herold, a German daily. 

We sent for Illsen and questioned him of his 
dealings with Schlmmel. He had written an 
article which he sent to the newspapers protesting 
against the shipment of arms and ammunition to 
the Allies, for which Schlmmel had paid him $100. 
That he said was the extent of his service. 

"Did you ever see this man Ebling there?" 
I inquired, feeling that in Ebling we might find 
the missing link between the bomb-makers and the 




Sergeant Thomas Jenkins, U. S. Army, who successfully 

located a part of one of the bombs in a locker in 

the German Turn Verein in Brooklyn 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 175 

fires. ** Yes," Illsen replied. '' Where Is he 
now?" Illsen did not know. " Do you remem- 
ber meeting anyone else In the office?" "Yes, 
there was a lithographer. His name Is Uhde. 
He comes, I think, from Brooklyn but I do not 
know where he is." 

It is our business to find out where people are, 
and as the reader may already have observed, 
to follow a case through from one man to an- 
other if we have to question a thousand individuals 
on the way to our goal. We took up the search 
for Uhde, and investigated everyone of that name 
in Greater New York. More months had passed 
before we finally found the man we were after — 
Walter Uhde. We pounced on him without the 
formality of an examination, and searched his 
room, to find some correspondence with Schimmel 
and more newspaper accounts of the arrest and 
trial of the Hoboken gang. It was this evidence 
and the pressure which It brought to bear upon 
his conscience that made Uhde give up evidence 
enough to picture the bomb plot In its entirety. 

It began, as the outbreak of the ship fires al- 
ready had Indicated, In the early months of 19 15. 
One winter night there was a secret meeting in 
the restaurant of the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum. 
In a private dining-room sat Dr. Scheele, the 



176 THROTTLED 

chemist, Captain Wolpert, the dock-superintend- 
ent, Karl Schlmmei, the lawyer, Uhde, the litho- 
grapher, Eugene Reistert, the proprietor of the 
restaurant, and a certain Captain Steinburg. This 
man was particularly dangerous to the welfare of 
the United States. His real name was Erich von 
Steinmetz, and he was a captain in the German 
navy. At that time he had just come to America 
by way of Vladivostock, dodging the immigration 
examiners by travelling in woman's dress, and 
evading the quarantine authorities by concealing 
in the fold of the dress the same tubes of glanders 
germs with which he sent Ebling to inoculate the 
horses for the Allies. Steinmetz was Rintelen's 
first and ablest assistant, and Schimmel was his 
second. The two men outlined to the dinner 
party a plan to manufacture and plant the bombs. 
The sailors would make the containers, Scheele 
would see that they were filled and would act as 
paymaster for the group, Schimmel and Wolpert 
would keep in touch with the sailings and cargoes, 
and Wolpert, Uhde and Reistert would deliver 
them to the small fry who could be hired to place 
them In sugar-bags and other freight. 

How well the plan succeeded we already know. 
Wolpert distributed the bombs to several local 
points of German operation In the greater city, 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 177 

and even Scheele had on one occasion carried a 
box full of bombs packed only in sawdust from the 
laboratory over to the Labor Lyceum. Relstert 
and Uhde tested a few of the infernal machines 
In the rear of the building, and Uhde fancied 
them so much that he kept one as a souvenir, 
stowed away in the toe of an old boot In his 
locker at the Turn Verein, where Detectives Barth 
and Jenkins found it. The conspiracy had or- 
iginated in March; the first day of May, Wolpert 
gave a bomb to a Chenango who smuggled it 
aboard the Kirkoswald, with the result which we 
have followed. On May 7, 19 15, the glorious 
Lusitania was torpedoed, and on the following 
morning, Karl Schlmmel, coming into his office and 
finding Illsen and Boniface there, exclaimed: 

" Ah — that U-boat commander has done well 
enough, but he has stolen all the glory away from 
me. I had nine cigars on the LiisitaniaJ* (For 
'* cigars" read "bombs.") "If they had not 
torpedoed her the cigars would have done the 
work! " 

He may have told the truth. His secret is at 
the bottom of the Atlantic now, along with what 
shreds of respect the civilized world might other- 
wise have had for Germany. It is certain that 
Schlmmel tried to place his " cigars " aboard the 



178 THROTTLED 

vessel, for Reistert had given Uhde $ioo and a 
little man named Klein a package of bombs with 
instructions to go to a saloon in West Street near 
the White Star piers. There they were to meet a 
third man, to whom they would deliver the pack- 
age, and that man would see them safely aboard 
the ship. The man did not appear at the ap- 
pointed hour, so they left the package with the 
bartender, and went to the missing man's house 
in Harlem, where they paid him his fee. It was 
the same Klein who had been carrying a bomb 
in his pocket one afternoon v*^hen Schimmel had 
sent him to South Ferry to place it aboard a ship. 
But the bomb caught fire, and before he could 
rid himself of it it had burned through his cloth- 
ing, so Schimmel magnanimously gave him $20 
for a new suit and his trouble. And it was the 
same Klein whom we found dead of disease in a 
hospital, beyond the law's reach, when we finally 
were tracing him for arrest. 

The stories of the culprits combined to lay at 
their door the origin of most of the ship fires with 
which we had been afflicted for the past two years. 
If nothing else had proved it, the cessation of the 
fires would have been enough. We were anxious, 
after our twisting, winding search, rather to have 
the guilty men convicted and placed in safe-keep- 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT 179 

ing than to ^x definitely upon them the guilt for 
all of the fires — that would have been practically 
impossible — but the very fact that the fires 
ceased is sufficient evidence of their complete guilt. 
It was not until October 17, 19 17, six months 
after the United States had gone to war, that our 
long hunt came to an end, and we arrested Boni- 
face, Reistert, Uhde and one Peter Zeffert. It 
was Zeffert who confessed to having gone to 
Schimmel's office one afternoon to help him fill 
the bomb containers with chemicals. Reistert was 
there, and the three took the bombs away in a 
taxi-cab to meet a destroying agent in a waterfront 
saloon. The agent did not show up, and Messrs. 
Schimmel, Reistert and Zeffert thereupon returned 
to the Chambers Street office and unloaded the 
tubes. 

I am sorry that our laws were not at that time 
drastic enough to punish the men as they deserved. 
James W. Osborne, the assistant United States 
Attorney who tried the case, wove an admirable 
prosecution, and Judge Harland B. Howe turned 
a stern face upon the prisoners. Wolpert had 
been haled from Atlanta to answer to the new 
charge, as had von Kleist and Becker. The 
engineers were brought out of their internment 
camps. And last, and foremost of all, Franz 



i8o THROTTLED 

RIntelen was there — returned to us by the Brit- 
ish to answer to a series of charges which he had 
tried hard and expensively to conceal. The best 
our laws of the moment could do for these men 
who had defiled our hospitality and destroyed mil- 
lions of dollars' worth of property on our soil 
was to sentence them to one-and-one-half years 
in Atlanta. It is to the everlasting credit of Judge 
Howe that Rintelen, Wolpert, von Kleist, Becker, 
Praedel, Paradies and Garbade received the maxi- 
mum prison term, and the maximum fine of $2,000 
each. Under the espionage act later adopted each 
of them could be sentenced to twenty years and 
fined $10,000. 

Popular consent would have made short work 
of these men's lives. Justice had to preside over 
their trials, however, and they were punished to 
the full extent of an inadequate law. A more 
drastic criminal code would probably have fright- 
ened the German spies in the United States, and 
it is equally true that German agents who were 
caught in the net of the law laughed up their 
sleeves as they made use of one after another of 
the law's technical provisions and privileges to 
avert what would have been certain and swift 
death had they worn the field-gray uniforms of 
their nation. They have not suffered in propor- 




Norman H. White, of Boston, a civilian attached to 
the Military Intelligence, who unearthed 
numerous German intrigues 



ALONG THE WATERFRONT i8i 

tlon to their crimes. But their nation is paying 
the price. 

There Is something In the spectacle of Rintelen 
serving his sentence at Atlanta — a long sentence, 
which he tried numerous tricks to evade — that 
is peculiarly German, and that comes more nearly 
satisfying our popular desire for retribution than 
the plight of any of his wretched em^ployees. He 
came to America arrogant, rich, defiant, cruel, 
and sly — to wage war upon us. One of his first 
acts was to sign his check for $10,000 to manu- 
facture bombs to destroy our shipping. When 
certain Americans crossed his reeking trail he 
ran away in terror. By great good luck he was 
captured, discovered, and returned and by con- 
siderable persistence and patience on the part of 
the Bomb Squad one of his trails was laid bare. 
(He had many others.) He suffered great In- 
dignity, as he thought, at being tried with the 
manual laborers whom he had employed and left 
in trouble. He was convicted and sent to prison. 
He pleaded ill-health, though he was a strong 
man, and he tried to be transfcx'red to a more 
lenient prison. He invoked the aid of his crum- 
bling government, who informed Washington that 
unless he were surrendered to Germany that na- 
tion would take the lives of American soldiers cap- 



1 82 THROTTLED 

tured in battle. Every trick failed, and Franz 
Rintelen, tried not as a prisoner of war for what 
morally were acts of war against the United 
States, but by our peace courts, and under our 
lenient peace laws, must now serve out his term 
in an American prison, although his nation has 
given up the war and begged for clemency. 

Rintelen used to suggest that he was an illegiti- 
mate relative of the late Kaiser. It may be true: 
the two have something in common. The Kaiser 
has become plain Hohenzollern, and the chief 
German bomb-plotter in the United States, is, as 
Wolpert angrily said that day at headquarters, 
" not von Rintelen, damn him — Rintelen! " 



VIII 



MR. holt's four days 



The facts were apparently unrelated to each 
other. Only a flight of Imagination would have 
connected them, and Imagination, though It is 
often valuable In speculating on what probably 
happened, Is not court evidence of what did hap- 
pen. In the order of their occurrence, the facts 
were these: 

I. On April i6, 1906, Leone Krembs Muenter, 
wife of Erich Muenter, an instructor in German In 
Harvard College, died, soon after the birth of 
her second baby. The circumstances of her death 
were suspicious, and the Coroner directed that 
the stomach of the body be taken to the Harvard 
Medical School for examination. Dr. Muenter, 
on the following day, requested that he be allowed 
to escort the remains from Cambridge to Chicago 
for burial, and this permission was granted. 
With the children he made the gloomy pilgrimage 
west. The body of the dead wife was cremated. 
Dr. Muenter wrote at once from Chicago to the 
New York Life Insurance Company directing that 

183 



1 84 THROTTLED 

the policy on his wife's life be made payable to her 
sister, Instead of to himself. The examination of 
the lining of the stomach had Indidated slow 
arsenical poisoning and a warrant was Issued at 
once for the husband. But it reached Chicago to 
find him gone — no one knew where. 

2. In a corridor of the main floor of the Senate 
wing of the United States Capitol at Washington 
used to stand a telephone switchboard. On the 
night of Friday, July 2, 19 15, an explosion near 
it blew fragments of the board through the walls 
of the telephone booths adjoining. No one was 
about, which was lucky, for the wrecked switch- 
board was not the only damage done : plaster 
rained from the walls and ceilings, every door 
nearby was blown open (one was a door into the 
Vice-President's office which had not been In use 
for forty years), the east reception room was 
wrecked, a gaping hole was torn in the stonework 
of the wall, and fragments of y/indows, mirrors, 
crystal chandeliers and telephone apparatus flew 
in every direction. 

3. In his country home on East Island, where 
Long Island reaches out Into the Sound to form 
Glen Cove, John Pierpont Morgan was having 
breakfast on the morning of Saturday, July 3, 
19 15. It was nearly half past nine, and thq 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 185 

members of his family, together with several holi- 
day guests, were In the breakfast room, which Is 
on the eastern side of the house. An automobile 
drove up to the front door, and the butler was 
confronted by a man of dingy appearance who 
asked, in an accent suggesting German, to see Mr. 
Morgan. He presented a card bearing the 
legend *' Society Summer Directory: represented 
by Thomas C. Lester." The butler wanted bet- 
ter credentials and asked for them. The stranger 
pulled a revolver from his pocket, covered the 
butler with It and stepping inside the door de- 
manded, " Where Is Morgan? " 

With good presence of mind the butler an- 
swered, " In the library," — the library being in 
the west wing of the house, and away from the 
breakfast room — and stepped toward the library 
door. Unfortunately it was open, and the in- 
truder, who was following with his gun aimed, 
saw that the room was empty, and that the butler 
had lied. At the same moment Physick, the but- 
ler, realized that his ruse had not worked. He 
shouted, "Upstairs, Mr. Morgan! Upstairs!" 
hoping by the urgency of his cry to convey to the 
banker a warning that something was distinctly 
wrong and at the same time to get him out of 
range. Mr. Morgan at once hurried up a rear 



1 86 THROTTLED 

stairway and began to search for the trouble. A 
moment later Mrs. Morgan joined him. They 
proceeded from one room to another, found noth- 
ing, and asked a nurse what was wrong. As the 
little search party reached the head of the main 
staircase, with Mrs. Morgan in the lead, she 
caught sight of a strange man with a revolver in 
each hand. Lester had come up the front stair- 
case. Mr. Morgan saw his wife between him- 
self and the guns, brushed her aside, and charged. 
The man fired twice as the two went to the floorj 
grappling, and the hammer of his revolver clicked 
twice more on caps that did not explode. Two 
wounds, one in the front of the abdomen, and 
the other in the left thigh, did not prevent Mr. 
Morgan, from overpowering his assailant: he lay 
with the full weight of his 220 pounds on the 
man's body, pinning down the revolvers to the 
floor. One of the guns Mrs. Morgan and the 
nurse wrenched from the man's hand; the other 
Mr. Morgan captured. Physick had meanwhile 
roused the servants, and he stunned the intruder 
with a lump of coal as he lay on the floor. Les- 
ter's unconscious form was then trussed up and 
taken to the Glen Cove jail. 

There, briefly, were the facts. The Morgan 
shooting I have recounted In some detail to show 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 187 

the desperation with which the stranger tres- 
passed, and attempted murder. It was not an 
affair which suggested a motive of robbery, but 
apparently a cold attempt at assassination. The 
Capitol explosion had been fruitless in its results 
so far as the loss of human life was concerned, 
and its origin was at that time a complete mystery. 
The Muenter affair had long since passed out of 
my memory. How to get evidence to establish 
motives for the crimes, fix the entire responsibility, 
and punish the offenders? 

Never, probably, has long-distance communica- 
tion played a swifter or more helpful part In a 
case. In order to show just how a nation which 
has been called to the hunt can enter into the 
pursuit, let us follow the developments in their 
strict chronological order. 

At seven o'clock Saturday morning, before 
Lester had appeared at the door of the Morgan 
house, the newspapers in Washington received a 
typewritten form letter, signed " R. Pearce," pro- 
testing In excited terms against the shipment of 
munitions to the nations at war. Its second para- 
graph read: 

" In connection with the Senate affair would 
it not be well to stop and consider w^hat we are 
doing? " 



1 88 THROTTLED 

The writer stated further: 

" Sorry, I, too, had to use explosives (for the 
last time I trust) . It is the export kind, and 
-ought to make enough noise to be heard above 
the voices that clamor for war and blood money. 
This explosion is the exclamation point to my 
appeal for peace." 

Again he wrote : 

" By the way, don't put this on the Germans or 
Bryan. I am an old-fashioned American . . ." 

And he added, in a penned postscript: 

** We would, of course, not sell to the Germans 
if they could buy here, and since so far we only 
sold to the AlHes, neither side should object if we 
stopped." 

At half-past nine o'clock the shooting oc- 
curred at Glen Cove. About the same time Dr. 
Charles Munroe, consulting expert of the Bureau 
of Mines, was called to the Capitol to make an 
examination of the wreckage of the explosion. 
He soon arrived at the conclusion that the shock 
had been caused by no spontaneous combustion, 
but by a fair quantity of high explosive. 

While he was prying about among the debris, 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 189 

Lester was being lodged In the Glen Cove jail. 
His bonds were loosened, leaving him a very 
sore set of ankles and wrists, his cut forehead 
was bound up, and when he was questioned, he 
gave out the following statement: 

" I, Frank Holt, of Ithaca, N. Y., and lately 
professor of German at Cornell, do hereby freely 
make to William E. Luyster, justice of the peace, 
the following statement of the facts concerning 
my visit to the home of J. P. Morgan at East 
Island, Glen Cove, N. Y. 

*' I have been in New York City about ten 
days and had made a previous trip to the home 
of Mr. Morgan last week. My motive in coming 
here was to try to force Mr. Morgan to use his in- 
fluence with the manufacturers of munitions in 
the United States, and with the mllHonaires who 
are financing the war loans, to have an embargo 
put on shipments of war munitions, so as to 
relieve the American people from complicity 
in the death of thousands of our European 
brothers. 

"If Germany should be able to buy munitions 
here we would of course positively refuse to sell 
to her. The reason that the American people 
have not as yet stopped the shipments seems to 
be that we are getting rich out of this traffic, but 
do we not get enough prosperity out of non- 
contraband shipments? And would it not be 



190 THROTTLED 

better for us to make what money we can with- 
out causing the slaughter of Europeans? 

'* I am very sorry that I had to cause the 
Morgan family this unpleasantness, but I believe 
that if Mr. Morgan would put his shoulder to the 
wheel he could accomplish what I have endeavored 
to do. I wanted him to do the work I could not 
do. I hope that he will do his share anyway. 
We must stop our participation in the killing of 
Europeans, and God will take care of the rest." 

Lester, then, was not Lester at all, but Frank 
Holt. 

Meanwhile I knew nothing of what had trans- 
pired. I had risen that Saturday morning looking 
forward to a day of relaxation and pleasure, for 
there was to be a field day for the police at 
Gravesend Bay. On the way down to the track I 
read with some interest of the explosion in the 
Capitol, and then dismissed it from my mind: 
the newspapers, which had been printed about 
one o'clock of that morning, carried no news ex- 
cept a description of the effects of the explosion. 
Furthermore, it was a hohday, with another to 
follow, and I proposed to enjoy It. 

About noon Police Commissioner Woods called 
me to the telephone, told me hurriedly that Mr. 
Morgan had been " shot by a German," and 
told me to get down to Glen Cove as fast as 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 191 

possible. " Find out the man's motives and any 
accomplices he had," the commissioner said. 
" Keep In touch with me." And hung up. I 
found Detective Coy of the Bomb Squad, and a 
patrolman who knew German In case we should 
need an interpreter, and after some delay In get- 
ting a car, we hastened to the little Glen Cove 
jail. 

Then, at four o'clock, for the first time, I was 
told the facts as Glen Cove knew them. A search 
of Holt's person had disclosed two revolvers, 
three sticks of dynamite, a number of loose car- 
tridges, a cartoon clipped from a Philadelphia 
newspaper, an express receipt, and a scrap of 
paper bearing the names in pencilled handwriting 
of Mr. Morgan's children. Frank McCahlU, 
the constable in charge, showed me the statement 
Holt had made, and supplied the further informa- 
tion that Holt had been identified by some of 
Mr. Morgan's employees as a man who had been 
seen on the estate two days before — on Thurs- 
day. Glen Cove had been in a turmoil since 
the shooting. Newspaper reporters and photog- 
raphers had flocked to the jail, had taken photo- 
graphs of the prisoner, and already prints of the 
photographs were on their way to every large 
newspaper in the country. His statement, as well 



192 THROTTLED 

as a description of the man, had been telegraphed 
over the Associated and United Press wires in 
every direction. So I decided to have a talk 
with the prisoner himself. 

He was brought out of his cell, and we sat in 
comparative privacy on two camp-stools in the 
corridor. He was a frail, slight fellow, with 
deep eye-sockets, a prominent hook-nose, and a 
retreating chin. His accent was certainly Ger- 
man. His name, he said, was Frank Holt, and 
he was born in the United States. He told me 
he was forty years old, that his father and mother 
had been born in America, although they had 
both French and German ancestors, and that his 
wife and two children were in Dallas. For sev- 
eral years, he said, he had taught in Vanderbilt 
University, and during the year just past had been 
instructor in German in Cornell University, at 
Ithaca. He had left Ithaca two weeks before, 
and had stopped at a Mills Hotel in New York 
before coming down to Glen Cove. 

" What did you try to kill Mr. Morgan for? " 
I asked. 

" I didn't Intend to kill him. I want to per- 
suade him to use his influence to stop the ship- 
ment of ammunition to Europe." 

** Well, you chose a pretty strong means of 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 193 

persuading him, didn't you? What was the 
dynamite for? " 

" I was going to show him what was causing 
all the trouble — explosives." 

He answered frankly, but not completely. The 
scrap of paper bearing the names of the Morgan 
children, he said, was only a memorandum; he 
had Intended to hold them hostage until Mr. 
Morgan promised to exert himself to stop the 
export of supplies to the Allies. No amount of 
questioning would bring an answer as to where 
he had bought the dynamite, but he readily volun- 
teered the approximate addresses of the shops 
where he had purchased the revolvers and car- 
tridges. These facts gave me something to work 
on, and I went outside to a telephone while he was 
locked up again. 

Meanwhile the whole United States had been 
taking a keen Interest In the case. Holt's state- 
ment had reached Washington on the Associated 
Press wire, and was delivered to Captain Board- 
man of the Washington Police. Captain Board- 
man had been busy all morning throwing out lines 
on the Capitol case, and attempting to trace the 
author of the R. Pearce letters, which had been 
mailed In the city about nine o'clock of the previ- 
ous evening. He read the Pearce letter over 



194 



THROTTLED 



several times in search of some clue to the writer. 
Presently the Holt statement came in. From the 
two communications these sentences met the Cap- 
tain's eyes : 



Holt 
'* If Germany should 
be able to buy munitions 
here we would, of 
course, positively re- 
fuse to sell to her." 



Pearce 
" We would, of 
course, not sell to the 
Germans if they could 
buy here, and since so 
far we only sold to the 
Allies, neither side 
should object if we 
stopped." 



Captain Boardman^s next move was to wire to 
his chief, Major Pullman, who happened to be in 
New York to attend that same field day that Coy 
and I had missed. His message, dated 2 p. M. 
(while we were on the way to Glen Cove), read: 

" Ascertain from F. Holt, in custody at Glen 
Cove, N. Y., for shooting J. P. Morgan, his 
whereabouts Thursday and Friday, as he may 
have placed the bomb In the Capitol here Friday 
night." 

This message, sent In care of Inspector Faurot, 
was relayed to us at Glen Cove by Guy Scull, 
deputy commissioner, but not until after the Asso- 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 195 

dated Press man at the jail had had a tip tele- 
graphed from his Washington office to ask Holt 
the same question. Holt denied that he had been 
in Washington, flatly. But McCahill knew he 
had been in Glen Cove Thursday, so at 5 p. m. he 
telegraphed Captain Boardman: 

" F. Holt was in Glen Cove Thursday, July 
I, P. M." 

I telephoned headquarters the numbers of the 
revolvers, and the neighborhood in which Holt 
said he had bought them. Several members of 
the squad started out from headquarters to iden- 
tify the pawnshops, and to find out what they 
could of the history of three sticks of dynamite 
marked " Keystone National Powder Company. 
60 per cent. Emporium, Pa." 

Holt had proved obstinate to all questions of 
the source of his supply of dynamite. The man 
was getting tired: he had had a hard day, had 
been considerably battered, had been interviewed, 
photographed, harried with questions, his ankles 
and wrists ached, his head throbbed, and his mind, 
which though alert and active, was none too 
stable, was showing signs of exhaustion. His 
condition suggested that he might be in a mood 
to supply some of the further information we 



196 THROTTLED 

needed, so I suggested that we take an automobile 
ride and he could show me where he had been 
the day before. He protested at once. 

*' No ! My head is aching, and you want to 
take me on a ride and make a show of me to the 
morbid crowd. I will not tell you — not until 
later. Later perhaps, but not now I " 

" All right," I answered. " Later." 

Then I decided we had better get our informa- 
tion down on paper in a formal examination. 

The meeting convened at once, with Coy, Mc- 
Cahill, a county detective from Mineola, two 
deputy sheriffs, two patrolmen, a stenographer 
and myself as board of inquiry. It may serve 
to describe the fellow's manner, as well as to 
bring out what the examination further disclosed, 
if we make use here of extracts from the proceed- 
ings: 

Question. Where were you born? 

Answer. Somehow my brain is in such a shape 
that I can't remember — Wisconsin, I know. I 
don't know what it is that affected me — some- 
thing inside of me — maybe it is the shock I got 
from that. 

Q. You speak with a German accent. Were 
you born in Germany, or in any of the European 
countries — tell me the truth. 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 197 

A, Now listen. That has been said before — 
that I speak with a foreign accent. That is be- 
cause I speak several languages. I speak French, 
German, Spanish, and all that. That is the cause 
of that, you see? 

Q. We will eliminate the trouble of asking 
you questions If you will tell us the town or city 
in which you were born. 

A. Yes. Now I am trying to think (a pause) 
I will have to disappoint you. 

Q, Your memory is very clear on other things. 

A, As I told you, I have been lying there, 
thinking, thinking. 

I took up the matter of the express receipt 
found on him : 

Q. On June 11, 19 15, you shipped a box by 
the American Express Company to D. F. Sensa- 
baugh, loi South Marsalls Street, Dallas, Texas. 
What did that box contain? 

A, It evidently must have been a typewriter. 
I would not be sure now, I think it was a type- 
writer. 

And then the cartoon, clipped from the Phil- 
adelphia paper, brought out a very unexpected 
fact: 

Q. How many times have you been in Phil- 
adelphia ? 



198 THROTTLED 

A. No time. 

Q. You came to New York from Ithaca? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Do you mean to truthfully answer my ques- 
tion by saying that you have not been to Philadel- 
phia at any time since you left Ithaca? 

A. At no time. 

O. You have a clipping of a Philadelphia 
newspaper in your possession. Where did you get 
that? 

A. I think I got that out of a Philadelphia 
paper of course, that I found lying around. I 
thinly it was a cartoon. 

Q. Were you not in Philadelphia when you 
purchased that paper? 

A. I did not purchase that. I saw that lying 
around somewhere, probably in the Mills Hotel. 

Q. Where did you sleep last night? 

A. Now, I will tell you. A reporter from the 
Associated Press asked me about this Washing- 
ton business, and he was trying to connect me 
v/ith that. I suppose that is what you are trying 
to do. 

Q, I am not trying to connect you with any- 
thh g. I want truthful answers. I am very frank 
and honest with you. I will fairly investigate 
every answer that you make. 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 199 

A, Yes, I thought that over since he was here, 
and I think it Is just as well to say that I wrote 
that R. Pearce letter. I was In Washington yes- 
terday and came back on the train. I think It is 
just as well to say. 

Here was news ! McCahlll slipped out of the 
room, and sent this telegram to Captain Board- 
man : 

" Holt was in Washington Friday. Will wire 
full particulars later," and returned for the par- 
ticulars, which Holt continued to unfold. 

He had gone to Washington early Friday, ar- 
riving at 2 p. M., hired a furnished room near the 
Union Station, and two hours later walked over 
to the Capitol and found the Senate wing de- 
serted. He placed a bomb near the telephone 
booth, timed so as to explode in eight hours. 
He idled away the evening, mailed the R. Pearce 
letters, took a midnight train to New York, 
stopped at the Mills Hotel for mail, and took an 
early train to Glen Cove Saturday morning. 
What his activities had been since then we well 
knew. But w^hlle the confession of his respon- 
sibility for the Washington outrage was a really 
surprising bit, It did not conclude our work, for 
he had pointed out several new alleys of possi- 
bility which we must search. 



20O THROTTLED 

By seven o'clock we had, first, a sketch of Holt's 
recent career as a teacher. This we proceeded 
to verify by telephone to New York and by tele- 
graph thence to Ithaca, Dallas, Nashville, and 
Philadelphia. His account of the Washington 
bombing Mr. Scull telephoned to Washington, and 
Major Pullman left at once for Long Island to 
secure a more complete confession. We had the 
numbers of his revolvers and were already at 
work upon that clue. We had no information 
except the trade-mark of where he had got his 
dynamite, and knowing the strict city restrictions 
on its sale, I felt confident that he had accomplices 
who supplied it to him. The chances were, too, 
that Holt had more dynamite than the three sticks 
which he said had made up the Capitol bomb, and 
the three on his person. We knew he had called 
at the Mills Hotel, and we sent a man to search 
his room. We had a wholly unsatisfactory state- 
ment of his birthplace, which he had already con- 
tradicted once, and which lent color to the Ger- 
manic origin of his accent. And finally. Holt had 
given a description of the methods he used in mak- 
ing his bomb which I cannot detail here for obvi- 
ous reasons, but which from my acquaintance with 
explosives I knew to be untrue. By no means 
all the particulars of his acquaintance with dyna- 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 201 

mite had been explained, and the fact that this 
remarkable teacher of foreign languages, a man 
apparently of fair intellect, had committed one 
major crime and confessed to another all in the 
same day, made the motive all the more obscure. 
But we had learned that he talked freely, and that 
meant that he would give us more information, 
either consciously or unconsciously. 

Holt was moved about half past seven that 
night to safer keeping in the county jail at Mi- 
neola, and we reconvened there an hour later for 
further examination. Major Pullman joined us 
in the course of the evening and took part in the 
questioning. By that time I had word from New 
York that a telegram had arrived for Holt at 
the Mills Hotel signed by D. F. Sensabaugh, and 
inquiring for particulars. Thinking that this was 
a clue to possible accomplices I tried, taking sev- 
eral different angles of attack, to find out whether 
Holt had told Sensabaugh (who he said was his 
father-in-law), what he was going to do, and why 
he had written that evening to his wife. The re- 
sult of this questioning was nil. Then we went 
over his course In Washington, step by step, and 
brought out nothing of significance; then returned 
to the topic of his views on the shipment of muni- 
tions, and tried to draw out any talks which he 



202 THROTTLED 

might have had with friends on that subject. 
His answer to this was: 

" I have not talked to my friends about it, be- 
cause my friends, in my position, they are not the 
kind of people who would talk on such things. 
Do you suppose that a university professor would 
undertake that sort of thing? I think that can 
be easily figured out that I could not have any- 
body else with me." 

That was the conclusion which we were being 
forced to accept. But the mystery of the dyna- 
mite purchase was still unsolved. Holt said we 
could not guess the reason why he was with- 
holding the answer to it. I was inclined to agree 
with him just then. I couldn't guess. But he 
betrayed in one of his replies the real factor 
which was to solve the mystery. Major Pullman 
asked: 

" Why did you decide to go to the Capitol? " 

" Merely," replied the thin figure in the chair, 
" to get the most prominent place in the country. 
You see I wanted to call attention to my appeal." 

In this he had succeeded. The whole country 
was working on the case. If our feeling that 
Holt had bought more explosives was no more 
than a theory at first, it was strengthened when 
he admitted that he had spent nearly $275 in two 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 203 

weeks, had only six sticks of dynamite to show 
for it, and was able to account for only $50. He 
denied that he had ever been in the German Club 
in New York, reiterated that he was born in the 
United States, dodged the exact city, then sug- 
gested Milwaukee, said that the name of the col- 
lege he had attended in Texas " wouldn't come," 
and sidestepped cleverly any admission which 
might allow us to trace the dynamite purchase. 
Thus ended Saturday, July 3, which had started 
out as a holiday. I left two men to watch Holt, 
and went home, tired out, and not at all satisfied. 
While we had been busy with the prisoner, the 
wires to Boston and the trains to Chicago had been 
carrying out their routine tasks of syndicating 
news. A police officer in Cambridge in reading 
the description of Holt which had flashed out to 
the newspapers detected a familiar ring to the 
natural phrase " shambling walk " which had been 
used to describe Holt's gait. Thousands of men 
whom we encounter in daily life have shambling 
walks, but to this officer only one man had a 
shambling walk in which he was Interested, and 
that man was Erich Muenter, a Harvard instruc- 
tor, whom he had suspected of wife-murder nine 
years before. Nine years Is a long time, and 
the average person cannot recall oflhand the gait 



204 THROTTLED 

of anyone whom he last saw nine years ago, but 
those two words had evidently typified to the 
Cambridge officer the murderer who got away. 
When the news photographs followed the de- 
scription to Boston and the Cambridge police saw 
them, they were not so sure, for Muenter had had 
a beard, and in his Cambridge days his head was 
not bandaged. But suspicion had been aroused, 
and that was enough to issue the news throughout 
the country during the night. Reporters in Ithaca 
tried to verify it from Holt's associates at Cornell, 
and failed, reporters two thousand miles away in 
Dallas tried to verify it from Holt's confused 
father-in-law, and failed. Dallas, however, sup- 
plied the particulars of his previous life so far 
as anyone seemed to know them, and these par- 
ticulars were again relayed, verified, and amplified 
in every city in which Holt had ever been known in 
recent years. 

Sunday morning. Independence Day, I went 
early to Mineola and questioned Holt again, with 
little result. Meanwhile the Bomb Squad at work 
in New York had found one of the shops in Jersey 
City where Holt had purchased a revolver. He 
gave his name to the proprietor as " Henderson,'* 
and his address as Syosset, Long Island — a little 
station not far from Glen Cove. I asked him 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 205 

why he gave this fictitious name and address; he 
replied he had happened to see Syosset on a time- 
table, and that the name Henderson popped into 
his head. We then returned to my favorite sub- 
ject, dynamite, and Holt finally said that he would 
tell me on the following Wednesday, July 7, where 
he had bought it. Why Wednesday, July 7? 
He would not answer, and no amount of question- 
ing served any end except that of further con- 
fusion. 

The day was not without developments, how- 
ever. During the afternoon District Attorney 
Smith of Nassau County paid a visit to the jail, 
and identified the wretched Holt as a former 
acquaintance in Cambridge, Erich Muenter. At 
almost the same hour the Chicago authorities 
came into possession of the news photograph of 
the man mailed from New York the day before. 
They hurried with it to the home of two spinsters, 
known to be sisters of the missing Muenter, and 
obtained from them an unqualified identification: 
it was their lost brother, and " the news would kill 
their mother." This Pearce-Lester-Holt-Hen- 
derson-Muenter was becoming more interesting 
every minute. Wife-poisoner, dynamiter, gun- 
man — what next? 

" Next " was Monday. The second revolver- 



2o6 THROTTLED 

shop had been discovered, and again the use of 
the alias Henderson and the address Syosset. 
Holt, when I called on him in the morning, re- 
peated only what he had told the day before, and 
reiterated, " Wednesday I will tell you," until it 
became almost a refrain. He denied that he was 
Muenter, and that he had ever heard the name. 
I returned to New York to spend the rest of the 
daylight in investigation among the explosives' 
manufacturers. From the records of the ^Etna 
Company, of which the Keystone was a subsidiary, 
we learned during the afternoon that one Hender- 
son had telephoned an order for 200 sticks of 
dynamite to be delivered at Syosset. I was just 
ready to start for Syosset with Commissioner Scull 
when, as if we had not already had enough to in- 
terest us, our friends the anarchists exploded a 
bomb in Police Headquarters itself. Curiously 
enough, although it was a delay, this did not prove 
the disturbing incident which one might believe. 
We had had anonymous threats of it some weeks 
before; it was one year and a day after the acci- 
dental death of the anarchist Berg, who was killed 
making a bomb, 'and it seemed to have no connec- 
tion whatever with the Holt case. No one was in- 
jured, and after steps had been taken to follow the 



MR. HOLTS FOUR DAYS 207 

case, I went home to sleep what was left of the 
night. 

Tuesday arrived. 

I went to Syosset, and Interviewed the station 
agent, George D. Carnes. Carnes said he knew 
a man named Henderson. Henderson had seen 
him first about three weeks before when he came 
to the little station to claim a new trunk which 
had been shipped down from New York, appar- 
ently empty, as It weighed only thIrty-sIx pounds. 
Henderson had signed for the trunk, and gone 
away. He reappeared some days later and asked 
Carnes whether he had received two boxes of 
dynamite and two boxes of fuses and detonating 
caps — he had to blow up some stumps and he 
expected the explosives. They had not arrived. 
Henderson made Inquiries for several days, and 
when the boxes came, claimed them, signed the 
name of Frank Hendrix to the receipt, and drove 
away In a Ford. At last we seemed to be on the 
right trail. 

He had received the material, we knew, but 
where was It? In the trunk, perhaps. Had the 
trunk been shipped out of Syosset? No, Carnes 
said. We telephoned several stations In the vi- 
cinity, and finally at Central Park, a few miles 



2o8 THROTTLED 



west, we struck the trail again. The baggage 
records there revealed that a Henderson had 
checked a trunk to the Pennsylvania station, New 
York, on July 2 — Friday. That was enough to 
take us to Central Park. 

The check number I telephoned to New York 
for detectives to trace from the station if they 
could. Information of a stranger is freely offered 
in a village, and we found shortly that Holt had 
employed a small boy with a wheelbarrow to con- 
vey his trunk from a shanty in the woods to the 
station, and to the shanty we went. Near it lay 
a charred dynamite-box, and there were a few wax- 
paper wrappers from sticks of dynamite which the 
weather had left for our information. No ex- 
plosive was to be seen, but there was evidence 
that he had burned some of it nearby. 

If he had not burned it all, the balance of those 
two hundred sticks were in the trunk. The day 
was growing old. Carnes and I sped back to 
Mineola, and the station agent identified Holt 
as the dynamite man. I repeated my questions;; 
Holt replied, " I will tell you Wednesday." 

*' Look here," I said. " I have the number 
of that check. That dynamite is in the trunk. 
It's liable to go off any minute and kill a lot of 
people. I can trace that check, but it will take 






^Sm 



d 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 209 

time, and you better tell me quick where you left 
the trunk." 

** All right," Holt answered, and said that he 
had sent it to a storage warehouse whose office was 
somewhere near 40th Street and Seventh Avenue. 
Two minutes later Lieut. Barnltz and I were out 
of the jail and In a motor bound for New York. 

It took just 28 minutes to cover the 20 miles 
to Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, and we 
turned south to the section around Fortieth Street. 
We found the office of the storage company — 
empty. The warehouse itself was at 342 West 
38th Street, and we hurried over there, arriving 
simultaneously with the detectives who had been 
tracing the check number from the Pennsylvania 
station. An old watchman was In charge who 
knew nothing whatever of the records of the office, 
but who turned bright green when we told him 
what we were after. While Detectives Barnltz, 
Coy, Murphy, Sterett, Walsh and Fenelly went 
up into the recesses of the warehouse to hunt for 
the trunk, I called headquarters. 

" Commissioner Woods just called and wants 
you to call him at the Harvard Club," the office 
said. I did so, and reported our progress. 

" Get that trunk as fast you can and find out 
exactly what's in it," said the Commissioner. 



2IO THROTTLED 

" Washington just called me to say that Governor 
Colquitt down In Dallas just wired them. He 
says Holt's wife got a letter from Holt dated 
July 2 saying that he's put dynamite on a ship 
now at sea, and that it will sink on the seventh! '* 

On the fifth floor of the great dark barn they 
discovered the trunk, with a dozen others on top 
of It. There were no lights, and it was necessary 
to roll it over, haul it out, snake it across other 
piles, and carry it down four flights of steep 
stairs in the dark to the oflice. Barnltz picked 
up an axe and hacked the lock away. He lifted 
the cover, and there we found one hundred and 
thirty-four sticks of dynamite - — one hundred in 
their original box, and the rest packed in small 
spaces between hammers, nails, bolts, and other 
tools, several bottles of sulphuric and nitric acid, 
and 197 detonating caps — a pretty package to 
trundle down four flights of dark stairs and open 
with an axe ! 

Fifty sticks of the original 200 were unac- 
counted for. I telephoned the report to the Com- 
missioner, and followed It to the Harvard Club, in 
44th Street, while Barnltz telephoned for the in- 
spector of combustibles to come and take posses- 
sion of the explosives. The Commissioner, with 
Guy Scull, were sitting in the lounge, and I was 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 211 

reporting In greater detail when the Commissioner 
was called to the telephone. He returned a mo- 
ment later, and his first remark was this: 

'' Holt is dead at Mineola! " 

And there went our case. 

The first wild report from Mineola had it that 
Holt had been shot by a German. The inter- 
national consequences of the case, which had been 
hov-ering just out of reach for the past four days, 
now seemed certain. A nation which was still 
bitterly angry over the recent Lushania sinking 
would certainly not brook the violation of Its 
Capitol and the attempted assassination of one 
of its chief figures by a German agent, and if 
Holt had been shot by a German, It was more 
than likely that he had been killed to prevent a 
further confession which would Implicate the Im- 
perial German Government. These thoughts 
passed through our minds as we motored back 
across the Queensboro Bridge, and retraced the 
route Barnltz and I had just traveled. 

Holt was not shot by a German. Holt was not 
shot at all. An aged guard had been left to 
watch him that evening, just after Barnltz and 
I had left, for the prisoner, despairing over the 
Muenter identification, had already made one at- 
tempt with a bit of tin from a lead pencil to cut 



212 THROTTLED 

the arteries of his wrists, and we did not want him 
to try again. The old baiHli who sat outside the 
cell cage had not only left the cage door unlocked, 
but had been careless enough to leave Holt's cell 
door ajar. The prisoner seemed quiet enough, 
and the bailiff fell asleep. He woke to find Holt's 
body in a twisted heap in the center of the floor 
of the cell corridor. Holt had evidently been 
feigning sleep and while the bailiff dozed had 
crept out, climbed to the top of the cage, and 
dived headforemost to the concrete floor. 

There we found him. The man's skull was 
crushed from the impact of his dive. Rumors 
that he was shot by a mysterious rifle bullet from 
outside notwithstanding, Holt bore no wound ex- 
cept the bruise Physick gave him with the lump of 
coal, and the wound which was the result of his 
fall. If Holt was a German agent, he died with 
his secret. 

We had no time to analyze the question. We 
knew that Holt had written his wife he had placed 
dynamite aboard a ship which was at sea, and 
that July 7, the date on which he had promised 
an explosion, was less than two hours away. On 
the theory that he might have shipped an express 
parcel containing a bomb overseas from some 
nearby station, Mr. Scull and I spent the night 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 213 

in an exhaustive canvass by telephone and motor 
of every station in Nassau County. Many of the 
station agents were asleep, but we woke them, and 
searched until dawn. The net result was record 
of two shipments to Europe since the day Holt 
received the dynamite: One from Syosset the 
other from Oyster Bay. Back to New York 
again we raced, and at the office of the Adams 
Express Company found the Syosset package, 
opened it, and found — no dynamite at all. The 
Oyster Bay package had already been shipped to 
Europe; we telephoned the consignor, and learned 
that it contained clothes for a poor relative in 
England. 

Apparently Holt had not shipped a bomb. 
While we were opening his trunk at the ware- 
house the night before, the government was Issu- 
ing from Washington a wireless bulletin to all 
ships at sea, warning them to search the cargo 
thoroughly for a bomb. One by one the vessels 
which had sailed during the past week reported 
that they had investigated with no result, and as 
these reports came in we began to rest easier in 
our minds. Yet he had so persistently refused to 
tell us of the dynamite " until Wednesday " that 
we could not ignore the prophecy he had made to 
his wife — " With God's help, a ship that sailed 



214 THROTTLED 

from New York July 3 will sink on July 7.'^ At 
noon, of Wednesday, July 7, an explosion oc- 
curred in the hold of the stean^.ship Minnehaha, 
in mid-ocean, so strong as to blow out a section of 
the upper decks. The Minnehaha had left New 
York on July 3. Happily there was no loss of 
life, and she reached port safely. 

Two and two make four, but we must not add 
them for a moment. Holt — or Muenter, as he 
was fully and finally identified — may have placed 
a bomb m the Minnehaha, His promise 'may 
have been valid, but there is another possible 
origin for that explosion, namely, the activities of 
Paul Koenig's little group. He may have placed 
a bomb on the Minnehaha which was exploded by 
a bomb placed there by another. He may have 
placed a bomb on quite another ship — which did 
not explode, and which may have traveled harm- 
less to its consignee in England. That consignee 
may have been fictitious, or he may have been an 
accomplice; if an accomplice he may have been 
German. We must not add two and two until we 
have gathered up the loose threads as they were 
gathered up during those last active days, and 
begin to sort them out. 

If we do, we shall see that the Ithaca police 
found in Holt's rooms a scrapbook curiously re- 



MR. HOLT'S FOUR DAYS 215 

plete with newspaper reports of crimes, fratricides, 
patricides and plain murders. But no cases of 
wife-murder, nor of arsenical poisoning. And 
no clippings dating back of 1906; for all the evi- 
dence of the scrapbook. Holt had never existed 
before 1907. His wife, who, by a queer coinci- 
dence, bore the same maiden name, Leona, as the 
one whom he had poisoned, apparently knew 
nothing of Holt's life before she met him in Texas 
In 1909, loved him, and married him. She did 
not know that he was born in Germany, and edu- 
cated in Germany or that he had fled from Chicago 
to Mexico In 1906 and had then worked back into 
Texas as a student. He probably wrote to her 
from Ithaca In September, 19 14, that he had just 
had the pleasure of meeting Professor Ernest 
Elster, of Marburg, Germany, who was visiting 
Cornell, and that Elster had highly commended 
him for his articles on Goethe- — but if he did 
write to her, what then? Perhaps Herr Profes- 
sor Elster had commended Holt for some other 
past or projected service to Kultur. There is a 
queer development of the story in the fact that on 
September 4, 19 15, Mrs. Frank Holt, writing 
from Dallas, Texas, to Griffithe's warehouse, en- 
closed one dollar to pay for storage on a trunk 
left there by her husband July 2, and signed her 



2i6 THROTTLED 

name: " F. H. Henderson." Perhaps the 
rumor is true that a woman appeared at the 
offices of J. P. Morgan and Company in New 
York on July 2, 19 15, and attempted to warn Mr. 
Morgan of " something that was going to hap- 
pen the next day " and perhaps she was a friend 
of von Rintelen's. Mr. Morgan never saw her. 
But it is a fact that Rintelen had said to an Amer- 
ican with whom he was dealing: " Morgan and 
Root ought to be put out of the way ! " 

Probably — not perhaps — speculation has al- 
ready carried this story too far. The facts are 
that Mr. Morgan recovered from his wounds, 
and that two and two make four. 



IX 

THE NATURE FAKER 

Richard Harding Davis could have done justice 
to this story. 

In December of 19 17 we had been eight months 
at war. We would be an Innocent and purposely 
Ignorant nation if we did not acknowledge that 
even after we had been eight months at war there 
were German spies In the United States practising 
their quiet trade in order to make our waging of 
war as difficult as possible, just as for three years 
they had practised to keep us out of the war en- 
tirely. It would be as absurd to assume that there 
are not German spies In America to-day who have 
been here throughout our part In the war, and 
who have done their utmost to cripple us. 

But there is one who will not be here Indefi- 
nitely. . . . 

In December, 19 17, I received a complaint that 
valuable papers had been stolen from a certain 
Captain Claude Staughton, who hved at 137 West 
75th Street, Manhattan. The Captain himself 
said that the lives of thousands of American sol- 

217 



2i8 THROTTLED 

diers were in jeopardy, and that neither they nor 
he would rest in conscious security until those 
papers were found. So two other Thomases of 
the Bomb Squad, Sergeant Thomas J. Ford and 
Detective Thomas J. Cavanagh, were sent to in- 
vestigate the theft. 

They found that Captain Staughton lived in an 
apartm.ent on the second floor of the premises at 
137 West 75th Street and that his rooms were 
shared by a Captain Horace D. Ashton. Staugh- 
ton, they learned, was a captain of West Australia 
Light Horse — or was supposed to be — and a 
photograph they found of the captain in his uni- 
form revealed four gold wound-stripes on his 
sleeve, which suggested an interesting and heroic 
experience overseas. The detectives' first assump- 
tion was that the missing papers had had to do with 
British war work on which the captain was de- 
tailed to the United States. Then they found sev- 
eral photographic prints in which he was dressed 
in the uniforms of other nations than Great Brit- 
ain, and their second assumption was that he 
might be another of the nervy little band of coun- 
terfeit officers which had done all its fighting in 
the restaurants and sympathetic check-books of 
New York during the war. 

The detectives learned that Ashton had his 



THE NATURE FAKER 219 

mail forwarded to the " Argus Laboratories " 
at 220 West 42d Street. They called upon Ash- 
ton, and inquired about hisiroom-mate. Duquesne 
was all right, Ashton said — »was employed by an 
engineering company downtown as an inspector of 
airplanes, was in Pittsburg at the moment, but was 
expected shortly to return. Duquesne returned, 
and was placed under arrest on the charge (we 
had no better one at the moment) of unlawfully 
masquerading in the uniform of one of our allies, 
a uniform to which he had no title. A thousand 
questions sprang up in our minds about the man : 
why was he in disguise, how long had he been 
posing, how could he carry out the bluff without 
being discovered, especially by the highly reputable 
firm which employed him? — those were a few. 
We began to investigate, and from Ashton and 
other sources we pieced together the checkered 
pattern of his career. Many of the fragments are 
missing, and some of them are probably in the 
wrong places, but this is the picture we found. 

He had applied for work at the J. G. White 
Engineering Company on September 18, 19 17, 
and in his rather detailed application for employ- 
ment set forth that his name was Fred du Quesne. 
He stated further that he was 39 years old, mar- 
ried, and a United States citizen, though born in 



220 THROTTLED 

a British colony. His nearest relative was " A. 
Jocelyn du Quesne/' in Los Angeles, and he had 
evidently had some trouble in parting the name 
In the middle, for It was written over an erasure. 
His next nearest relative was set down as '' Vis- 
count Francois de Rancogne, Prisoner of War, 
Germany," — an address safe enough from prompt 
investigation. Last of all his relatives was cited 
Edward Wortley, '^ Colonial Secretary, Jamaica, 
B. W. L" The three names were impressive, 
and with the possible exception of Los Angeles, 
the addresses were too remote to enable the J. G. 
White Company to find out quickly what sort of 
man this du Quesne might be. 

He described himself as a graduate of St. Cyr, 
the French West Point, as master of French and 
English (not German or Portuguese or Spanish), 
and as having lived in England, France, Africa, 
Australia, Central America, Brazil, Argentine, 
and the United States (but not Germany) . Pres- 
ent position he had none, but he would like one as 
" Inspector of military devices, purchasing agent 
for same, or army supplies transportation." You 
or I, were we working for the Kaiser, would have 
liked just such a position. He gave as refer- 
ences the name of Thomas O'Connell, a relative 
employed by the J. G. White Company in NIca- 



THE NATURE FAKER 221 

ragua; Ashton, Senator Robert Broussard of 
Washington, and the Marquis (not " viscount '* 
this time) de Rancogne, " Lieutenant General of 
Cavalry, France." 

He then set forth his previous experience, which 
I may quote direct in the light of later events : 

" 1898 to 1899. Secretary to board of selec- 
tion on miHtary devices and contracts. South 
Africa reporting Genr. de Villiers. (salary) £10 
weekly. 

** 1899 to 1902. South African War. Was 
inspector of military communication and reported 
secretary of war." {He does not state which seC' 
retary of war) £12.2.6 weekly. 

" 1902 to 1903. Lived in United States to 
start residence. Had an experience job in the 
subway looking on. $25.00. 

" 1903 to 1904. Went on tour of Congo Free 
State in the interests of making favorable pub- 
licity In this country for King Leopold. Gerard 
Harry in charge of campaign for the King. Re- 
ceived $10,000 for the job, with expenses. 

" 1904-5-6. Headed Eldu expedition and In- 
dustrial research party in Australia. Sir Arthur 
Jones financed me. Received £2,000 yearly. 

" 1907-8. Toured Russia for Petit Bleu, 
Publicity. 1,000 florins weekly. 



222 THROTTLED 

" 1908-9-10. Organized and built string of 
theatres in British West Indies. Financed and 
erected hydro-electric plant for S. S. Wortley. & 
Co., Kingston, Jamaica. Made percentages. 

"1911-12. Lived In Nicaragua and Guate- 
mala. Was with Mr. Thomas O'Connell in 
Nicaragua for one year. Made industrial and 
investment investigations, especially ore, fibre, rub- 
ber. $5,000 and expenses yearly. Mr. Hite 
financed. Address New Rochelle. 

*' 1913-14-15-16. Explored and travelled In 
South America, Brazil, Argentine, Peru, and 
Bolivia, on own account. Also conducted special 
expedition for Horace Ashton of 220 W. 42d St., 
New York.'^ 

An eventful record, certainly. We asked Ash- 
ton to cast a little light on it. Captain Fritz 
Joubert Duquesne, he said, was a scout In the 
Boer war — " the leading scout " were his exact 
words — but not for the British, but the Boers. 
There may have been a touch of irony In Du- 
quesne's description of himself as " Inspector of 
military communications '' for he had been cap- 
tured eight or nine times In his migrations through 
the British lines and had escaped each time — 
until the last, when he was made a prisoner of war 
at Cape Town, and according to an entry in the 



THE NATURE FAKER 223 

records of Scotland Yard, " was sent to Bermuda, 
whence he escaped after the declaration of Peace." 
The same records say: ^' The man Duquesne 
was acting as correspondent for a Belgian paper, 
the Petit Bleu; he was however in reality working 
for the Boers. . . ." Duquesne fancied pho- 
tographs of himself, as he made up rather dash- 
ingly, and an old print which the Bomb Squad 
men found in his effects bore out the fact of his 
imprisonment, for there he stood in his Bermuda 
jail with the shackles on his ankles and a grim, 
martyred expression on his face. 

The lure of Africa called to him, evidently, 
and he went back. We need not take too seri- 
ously his statement that he made a junket for 
King Leopold through the Belgian Congo, but 
anyone who remembers the uproar over the slav- 
ery by which the depraved old monarch was turn- 
ing his colony into gold to pay for his excesses 
will also recall the international complications 
which the Congo threatened. It was a likely spot 
for an international spy. During his survey of 
the publicity possibilities of the jungle Duquesne 
conceived a few publicity possibilities for himself, 
and he came to America as a mighty hunter of 
big game. 

** I ran across him first," said Ashton, '* in 1909. 



224 THROTTLED 

— At that time he was writing an article for 
Hampton* s Magazine called ' Hunting Big Game 
in Africa.' In publishing his articles he needed 
photographs, and he came to me. I was inter- 
ested in his conversation and I said to him: 
* Why don't you lecture ? ' So he went down to 
the Pond Lyceum Bureau. He went on a lecture 
tour for the Lyceum and later on a tour of the 
Keith circuit. . . ." 

We found in his effects a program of the lec- 
tures he gave, its cover decorated with a small 
round photograph of Colonel Roosevelt in hunt- 
ing costume and a large studio photograph of 
Duquesne in khaki, wearing boots and a revolver, 
and looking sternly out of the picture as tradi- 
tion says a lion-hunter should look. Page two 
carried a synopsis of his lecture, of which one 
topic was " Hunting with Roosevelt," and a re- 
production of a number of newspapers which were 
then publishing his " Hunting Ahead of Roose- 
velt," an article written for Hampton* s Magazine, 
On page three Captain Duquesne figured again 
In effigy, this time standing beside the prostrate 
form of '* A Rare Specimen — the ' White Rhi- 
noceros,' " and we are to believe that he killed 
the beast. Page four (and last), reproduced a 
cartoon from the Washington Star of January 26, 




r 



V\^>.v 




Fritz Duquesne prepared for a Lecture Tour as Captain 
Claude Stoughton 



THE NATURE FAKER 225 

1909, which portrayed President Roosevelt point- 
ing to a picture of an elephant, and enthusiastically 
inquiring of a hairy hunter labelled " Duquesne " : 
*' I want to know his vital spot! " 

A quotation from Hampton!s Magazine, also 
printed in this program, gives a new vision of 
the man's life from 1900 to 1909. It is probably 
as truthful as any — here it is: 

" When the British succeeded in cutting cable 
communications between the Boer Republic and 
the rest of the world, Duquesne carried the news 
of the Boer victories over the Mozambique bor- 
der, and from there he wrote his despatches to the 
Petit Bleu, the official European organ of the Boer 
Government. He was once captured by the 
Portuguese and thrown into prison at Lorenzo 
Marques;. Later he was taken a prisoner to 
Europe at the request of the British Govern- 
ment. When the ship that conveyed him and 
his guard touched at Naples, he was suffering 
from a fever and in consequence was placed in an 
Italian hospital. On his recovery he was allowed 
to go free. He went to Brussels and was sent 
back to the front by Doctor Leyds, with plans 
for the seizure of Cape Town by the Boer com- 
mandos then mobilized in Cape Colony. 

'' Everything was ready for the taking of the 



226 THROTTLED 

city when, a traitor having revealed the plot, 
Duquesne and a number of others were captured 
in Cape Town inside the British defenses. This 
was the climax of what has come to be known 
as the ' Cape Town Plot.' Some of the prison- 
ers were shot and some sentenced to death who 
later had their sentences changed to life imprison- 
ment. Captain Duquesne was among the latter. 
Ten months later he escaped from the Bermuda 
prisons, got aboard the American yacht Margaret 
of New York while she was coaling at the dock, 
and was conveyed to Baltimore. 

" Back to Europe he went again, as war cor- 
respondent and military writer on the Petit Bleu; 
thence to Africa, where he took a commission on 
the Congo. In East Africa he hunted big game 
for sport and profit, and finally he came to New 
York to do newspaper and magazine work." 

He cut a figure in America as a hunter. Back 
in 19 10, when Congress amused itself with light 
diversions, when President Taft was In the White 
House and when President Roosevelt was in 
Africa, the eyes of the nation were turned per- 
force toward that great preserve of wild game. 
On March 24, 19 10, the House of Representa- 
tives' Committee on Agriculture went into session 
with the Honorable Charles F. Scott In the chair. 



THE NATURE FAKER 227 

Late March in Washington has a hint of spring, 
and that Thursday was probably an off-day, with 
nothing much to do, for the committee's business 
was the consideration of H. R. 23261 — a bill " to 
import into the United States wild and domestic 
animals whose habitat is similar to government 
reservations and lands at present unoccupied and 
unused. . . . Provided, that such animals will 
thrive and propagate and prove useful either as 
food or as beasts of burden, and that two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars ... be appro- 
priated for this purpose." The bill was Repre- 
sentative Broussard's, of Louisiana; he had in 
mind the re-population of the unyielding back- 
waters of his constituency with happy families of 
— what? Foreign sheep, or parrots, or egrets, 
or fish? Not at all. Families .of hippopota- 
muses. 

The Gentleman from Louisiana addressed the 
meeting briefly, saying that he had brought to 
the hearing three distinguished specialists in the 
matter of wild beasts. Dr. Irwin of the Bureau of 
Plant Industry, Major Frederic Russell Burnham, 
a fine old pioneer whom Richard Harding Davis 
did describe in his " Real Soldiers of Fortune," 
and '' Captain Fritz Duquesne, formerly In the 
Boer army, who is lecturing and writing on this 



228 THROTTLED 

subject. . . ." Dr. Irwin spoke earnestly for the 
introduction of the hippo, Major Burnham made 
an absorbing address on the habits of wild ani- 
mals he had known — and a herd of camels he 
once pursued in Texas — and our bright and 
voluble Captain Fritz then told the committee 
extraordinary things of the home of the hippo- 
potamus, the delicacy of its flesh, the amiability of 
its temperament, and the carelessness of its ap- 
petite. " During my boyhood," he said at one 
stage of the proceedings, " the French soap manu- 
facturers used to come down there and pay us all 
sorts of prices, competing with one another, to 
get the fat of the hippopotamus; and we made a 
considerable amount of money from saving the 
fat when we killed a hippo. The Boers were in 
the habit of going down to the river and killing a 
hippo and bringing it in and dividing it among the 
different families in the district. It is pretty hard 
to get rid of four and a half tons of meat. In 
the case of the bones of the animal, we would take 
an ordinary wood saw and saw them in halves, and 
make a great big pot of soup for a large number 
of the people, including the Kaffir servants on 
the ranch, or the farm, as we call it.'' Again: 
*' My father was instrumental in sending the camel 
to Australia from Africa, and also in introducing 



THE NATURE FAKER 229 

It Into the Kalahari desert. The German Gov- 
ernment now uses the camel exclusively for Its 
cavalry in the Kalahari desert, which Is practically 
the counterpart of the deserts in this country. 
My father had the contract to take them over to 
Australia for the West Australian Government 
and I took them over there. To-day camels and 
ostriches from Africa are being raised in Aus- 
traha." 

Mr. Chapman asked: " Do you think animals 
such as you have mentioned would become ac- 
climated here without difficulty? " Duquesne re- 
plied: "Yes, I was over there recently In one 
place where Colonel Roosevelt passed through, 
and the frost was that thick (Indicating about one 
inch) . That is where he went to get some of his 
best animals. . . ." In discussing the zebra he 
said: " There Is nothing wrong with the animal. 
The English in Africa want to get percentage, 
you know. They put an animal out and they 
v/ant to break it in right away, and they want to 
get some money for it right on the spot. That 
is what they are In Africa for. They want to 
take on the animals and break them In at once. 
The Germans are more scientific than the Eng- 
lish. In German East Africa they are making 
a great success of domesticating these animals I 



230 THROTTLED 

have spoken of, and crossing the zebra. . . . 
The Germans in Germany, France, and Belgium, 
not to mention those in the United States, tried 
scientifically to make the leopard change his spots, 
too." 

The man really exhibited an unusual acquaint- 
ance with wild beasts, and he summed up the 
picturesque argument for the bill when he said: 
" If there is vegetation in a river, the hippo- 
potamus will never leave the river. If you had 
the hippopotamus in Louisiana and it ate up all 
your water plants you would be quite willing to 
let the hippo live down there. You see the water 
plants have to live on a certain amount of air, 
and the fish live on a certain amount of air. 
Neither the plant nor the fish can live on air that 
Is not there. As the plant is the stronger, and is 
able to take the air from above, it will draw It 
at the bottom and draw It from the top, and the 
fish is suffocated in the water. Then when a storm 
comes and blows the water plants, which are 
floating, all to one side, the fish are netted up 
against them and kept in one place until they die. 
These plants exhaust the air in the water that Is 
passing through the fishes' gills and that destroys 
the fish." I v/ish there were space here to re- 
produce all the proceedings of that hearing — it 




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THE NATURE FAKER 231 

Is historic vaudeville : a German spy teaching a 
class of American congressmen about the hippo, 
and suggesting subtly that when they purchase a 
fleet of the great beasts for the Louisiana bayous, 
they let him round them up. He would have 
done It if there had been American money In It. 

American money appeared from another 
source, however, in 191 1. Duquesne had been 
working In a desultory way for the moving pic- 
tures, and he Interested one HIte, a functionary 
in the Thanhouser Film Company, In a plan to 
explore Central America with a moving-picture 
camera. Ashton said he also obtained financial 
support from Frank Seiberling of the Goodyear 
Rubber Company of Akron, a great patron of« 
sports, and the financier of the Ill-fated balloon 
" Akron " in which Walter Wellman once tried 
to cross the Atlantic. He set sail In 191 1 for 
Jamaica, where he enlisted the finances of his 
father-in-law, Wortley, in the project, and then 
moved on to Guatemala. There he was sus- 
pected of revolutionary activities, and after cabling 
Washington and receiving a satisfactory report 
from the state department, he was released, and 
made his way through Honduras to Nicaragua. 
There he spent some time, and saw something of 
O'Connell, the railroad man — enough to re- 



232 THROTTLED 

celve a pass over all lines of the NIcaraguan rail- 
road. 

In 19 13 he returned to the United States. 
Among the papers which vie discovered was a 
record of an insurance policy for a maximum of 
$80,000 worth of moving picture film at $4 a 
foot, which Duquesne took out with the Mann- 
heim Insurance Company in New York on De- 
cember 17. He was setting out on another ex- 
pedition, and he wished to insure his reels of 
film on shipboard from 

" seas, fires, pirates, rovers, assailing thieves, 
jettison, barratry of the master and mariners, 
and all other perils, losses and misfortunes 
that have or shall come to the hurt, detri- 
ment or damage of the said goods and mer- 
chandise or any part thereof." 

By a separate certificate the company also In- 
sured Duquesne against further risk, thus: 

" It Is agreed that this insurance covers only 
the risk of capture, seizure or destruction by 
men-of-war, by letters of marque, by taking 
at sea, arrests, restraints, detainments or acts 
of kings, princes and people authorized by 
and in prosecution of hostilities between bel- 
ligerent nations. . . ,'* 



THE NATURE FAKER 233 

and off to the Spanish Main and the pirates and 
the assailing thieves sailed Fritz Duquesne. 

His migrations during the years of 19 14 and 
19 1 5 are not clear. This much Is certain: that 
on June 16, 19 15, Sir C. Mallet, the British min- 
ister at Panama, wrote to the foreign office In 
London the following note, setting forth an ob- 
servation he had made that day In the Zone: 

" Through a Canal Zone detective I learnt 
confidentially that a passenger named Captain F. 
Duquesne, travelling with a passport Issued by the 
United States Consul at Mafiaos, Brazil, had em- 
barked for Trinidad on the R. M. S. Panama on 
the 14th Instant. 

" My Informant stated that Captain Duquesne 
poses as an American officer but in reality Is an 
Intelligence officer in the service of the German 
Government. 

" I have warned the Governor of Trinidad by 
telegraph so that a watch may be kept on Cap- 
tain Duquesne's movements.'* 

The wily captain had been cruising rather busily 
through the Caribbean, over the Isthmus, and Into 
South America. His passport connected him with 
Manaos, the British message established his pres- 
ence at Panama and Trinidad, a German war com- 



234 THROTTLED 

munique dated " December 20," and signed by 
the German consul, Lehmann, in Guatemala, 
showed that he was an acceptable guest at the out- 
posts of the German Empire. And he had visited 
Nicaragua before he entered Panama in 19 15, 
for we found in his possession this letter : 

" Managua, May 5, 1915. 
** Imperial German Consulate 
for Nicaragua: 
" It is a pleasure for me to recommend to you, 
my countrymen, the bearer of this, Mr. Fritz 
Duquesne, Captain of Engineers to the Boer 
army, very warmly. 

" The same gentleman has on many occasions 
given many notable services to our good German 
cause. 

" The Imperial German Consul, 

" Uebersexig.'* 

Enclosed In the envelope was Uebersexig's per- 
sonal card, reinforcing his recommendation of 
Duquesne as an accredited German agent. 

Trinidad Is a good jumplng-off place into the 
far tropics, and it Is quite possible that as Ashton 
said Duquesne disappeared Into the Interior of 
Brazil, and " explored the unknown regions of 
Brazil and the Amazon." It Is not hard to find 
unknown regions of Brazil within a few miles of 
the coast. He probably did not penetrate far into 



THE NATURE FAKER 235 

the Interior, for In January of 19 16, he showed up 
in lower Brazil. 

He emerged from the Interior as a valiant ex- 
plorer, preceded by native carriers whom he had 
hired to transport his precious movie-film. As 
he approached the port of Bahia Duquesne's per- 
sonality underwent a perceptible change. Du- 
quesne suddenly became George Fordham. 
Among his papers we found an application for 
shipment by a Brazilian broker which read as 
follows : 

*' Honorable Superintendent. 

" Francisco FIguerado requests a permit to ship 
for New York via steamer Verdi to sail on Jan- 
uary 28, 1 9 16, a case as described below: 
*' BahIa, January 27, 1916. 

'' Raul E. de Oliveira, Custom House 
Broker. 
*' I case weighing 80 kilos. . . .v. . . . oo$5oo 



"One case of potter's earth in dust (sam- 
ples)" 

Potter's earth may have been included In the 
materials in the case, but that Is doubtful, for on 
October 4, 1916, ''Mrs. Alice Duquesne being 
duly sworn deposes and says that she accom- 



236 THROTTLED 

panled her husband, Captain Fritz Duquesne, dur- 
ing his trip through Central America in the Spring 
and Summer of 19 14. That in the baggage was 
an iron trunk used to carry moving picture films 
and negatives which she presumes to be the same 
trunk that was subsequently shipped by Capt. 
Duquesne per the S. S. Tennyson from Bahia to 
New York sailing in January, 19 16. That the 
said trunk was about ^ inch thick, and made of 
iron about 45 inches in length by 30 inches in 
height by 26 inches in depth . . . had a hinged 
cover that overlapped the sides of same, and 
fastened down with two thumb screws and a lock. 
That two iron bands went around the trunk and 
were riveted to same. That the cover was lined 
with packing where it overlapped the sides of the 
trunk. That the said trunk was of very solid con- 
struction, painted a dark green, almost black, and 
that two men were required to lift same." 
Hardly a suitable receptacle for potter's earth. 
Furthermore, George Fordham, whose handwrit- 
ing is identical with that of Fritz Duquesne for the 
simple reason that the two men were the same, 
on February 1 1 signed an invoice at the American 
consulate in Bahia stating that he solemnly and 
truly declared that the 28,000 feet of moving pic- 
ture film and the 4100 negatives which he was 



mm\n on the mm \ 

BOMBS FOUNCV'lN THE LUGGAGEJ 

OF A SUSPECTED PASSENGER— : 

ARRESTBO AT SANTOS. j 

Cu'. 'Jo JiJK-.Sr.j, Xiju-cli 2?. I 
li V- rriH'rt.-'l that ou t.'i>; l.-sniport 
aril iio.u si'-;inK-i- v-ia;*:Hi, ■.vhioti eail-i 
en n-fim \/a v''-.'.-v. <,.- \'^x-,-:.\ j;, s^s- 1 
•;>li".'i. a?.ta iif-ti b. <>)if- ;f tli'.- passoir f 
LVvs «.;i<)>-ily aUer Icnviu^ P')rr ; J,i9 ! 
••..■maiiie'i '■•),. li.-ni.'itly in Iji.; xuui'room j 
o.nr: x--'yL i),i.'i!s i."> sUun nii tO!ita--t ! 

TilO -'rtiN, ■':.■:. M!i'>i- .'o piiri>il)'.(; i;i>n- } 
i;;i':.>n'\ ■'^. '•■iiJi'.-fJ !'-r !■;;• ;:rinN ;.::i>prR. I 

l-.-;ii--.-.:!UO'i "iiin U> bf £ RtlSSIiiri. .\'ot I 
...uirt: s*:ti*-n.--.i. tlic ••:ir''i'-U! crdi'T'.-'] the I 
nmn's hiRpiae to !•«■ 'iVin-hyultTd. ' 
;-,:;a;n'--'- \\li;..h ;^i; ■-■l^:^,f;.•t vjf.lenr!*! 
pron>s< ....;. ill ou" ■••) rue i.viK^i were! 
rovnd ■.. ^vr..; ;!y;ri-r;ii-- i-.-iniw. for tfi? ' 
i-r-rf.iTH'- ■■:■ v\i,j 'i ti..' rrj:^r <-ou!'t ?,\\<: 
-no :--i;i^^;.ut<;:-y ._•-;.;;• nr-ti-r. Tticsv 
\y'ir^- ^o -"vyr, -;: y ;;i.i! x'ak niaii p'U 

Ti. S:-i ;-..^ •;,• -„us rViivf-rcf! to t)it> 
Urit:sii ; '.•»>;!],■. »-.!to tii-rnod liin. ovt^r 
■to !!>•; pi.iir-:;. 

!:i vi.>v.- of iil-.- r(i;.>!U CTInj!!-.;,! ^-x- 

I'losi.i)) i.j ;;.■■ ■T':i.nyHf.r}. <>i' fht- .sa!n<J 
lilu- ■;• 1 ; P'.'-j-uir.t:.) Ih-U 311 iitloiui" l" 



t ' t - ' ' 

eUtmamM ymtnnJt. Af-A^rTidt^ £^ ji/rjt. , nfmftaitii^uH .x4/tumm tl^ . 

■^ctimtMDf^ imfLfJ*f*^. ■<kiut€MKi e-«. ■^i^nist/^tlitai,- Atten^^ y tax' 
cl»t4* t vn^fietaiie^^ /:r-^nMju& Juitefjtjiai, ^^. »n»rn^<,^ t-. u.- 



lOTM in >i!»s«MloB -it Fr«J, JrxiMtt 2«ia«»c»,alU3 i;«on» or 
By i.l*ut.»nq>.7,^ort sod Oa'mjiJif h.ICftb ^iQ6i,r«» tux'i Fclt«« 



1 






(.ttr/^,-^-,. 





Invoice of Keiurned Amencan Goods aid Dc^lanmrnTof Forei.t,ni Bxporter. 



American Consular Service, 

Bah.la,.Brasil, Fobruairy 11, y^lCr 
/, OeoKg;a..?Qr<Sha;% , r/.- <,..;;;.-;. : 

Li:i: scvcra! iirtkles 'jf nicrch.uiiJi^c hcn'ln <[<x-i't:c(i r-rc, ,'■■ ,'/;c- '.•',>( t)/ ..j.., -y^ ..<./, 

rrti/v :iij<I bojui tj'le 'jf tin i^r'.'^ylh'ior nriHii!-:t!on v,- ;?..;;;/;. ■,',>;.■•(.■• </.'' •'.•.'. <; Ibnt they ■ 

wn: t::.ar',r! th'in th<: failed SUJtc^. !h. a, xlic /r^n ■'!' IfftW /^Ork .'.. , ■' 

k-i <.:■ ;,l„'.H 9oVAIMib«tr -- , li> 15 ;:!:.■: ti:cy /irc r<-t:-::-r c'rcUiK^ fcttw 

ntlviuKcd in niluc or ituprovcl in oii-Hii'-n by any process :>! in.ti>a:)i.:!:irr >fi- -.'tntrr means; ttad 
I'.mi no druwhtick, bounty, or uU'nviu'.d: has bcfupai'l or :ni:;nlr:^: ■hi-n-nn ur on itiiy part 



■Si^nMisrc, 



a^*^^ 



VALliE, U. S. COM. 



1. A significant clipping found in Duquesne's effects 

2. A German Communique found on Duquesne 

3. The United States Customs invoice by which Duquesne, 

as "George Fordham," shipped his "Films" 



THE NATURE FAKER 237 

shipping back to the United States were to the 
best of his knowledge and belief of the manu- 
facture of the United States and had been ex- 
ported from the United States In 19 13. 

The Tennyson sailed quietly out of the river- 
mouth Into the Atlantic and Duquesne vanished 
just as quietly. On February 26, when the ship 
was coasting along the Brazilian forest toward 
the Equator, a terrific explosion occurred In her 
hold, and three sailors were killed. The iron 
trunk never reached New York. The news of 
the catastrophe set fire to the British in South 
A,merlca and the English press seethed with such 
paragraphs as this — which we found in Du- 
quesne's papers, clipped from an Argentine news- 
paper : 

" Rio de Janeiro. 

" The confession of the clerk Bauer, arrested 
in connection with the Tennyson outrage, which 
led to the discovery of the papers and funds of 
the band of German bombers in an English safe 
deposit institution reveals a plot of far-reach- 
ing consequences fraught with danger to the neu- 
trality of a number of South American repub- 
lics, as well as peril to the lives of their citizens. 

** Besides a number of important documents, 
the police seized $6,740 in American bills, which 
were In an envelope marked * On His Majesty^s 
Service ' and addressed : ' Piet Naciud.' When 



238 THROTTLED 

this name was published it caused quite a shock In 
the AlHed circles here, as this man always cul- 
tivated their society and even recited at their 
benefits. He was ever loud in his denunciations 
of the Germans, and as he was a Boer, or pre- 
tended to be one, was doubly liked for his seem- 
ingly praiseworthy attitude. Little did the Eng- 
lish dream that they were harbouring a black- 
hearted spy in their midst whom they now know 
as one of the leading plotters whose audacity is 
beyond belief. The safe deposit was in his own 
name, and he gave his home address as Cape 
Town. Neither he nor the agent Niewirth and 
his fellow conspirators have yet been arrested. 
It is believed that they left with Naciud in a 
powerful motorboat that he owned." 

How Captain Fritz Duquesne, alias Fordham, 
alias Naciud, must have chuckled as he sat safely 
in the neutral Argentine and read this flattering 
tribute to his audacity. For he did turn up pres- 
ently in Buenos Aires, and embarked on a new 
audacity — nothing less than collecting the in- 
surance of $80,000 for the loss of the film which 
he claimed to have shipped In the Iron box! 

Let Ashton take up the story : 
". . . his wife . . . tried to collect the Insurance, 
but was advised that she would have better 
chances ... If he would disappear. He then 
assumed the name of Fredericks. In 19 16 a re- 



THE NATURE FAKER 239 

port was published in the New York Evening Post 
and the New York Times that he had been assas- 
sinated by Indians In the interior of Bolivia, and 
being interested I called at the office of the N. Y. 
Post and asked Mr. A. D. H. Smith, editor, to 
look this report up, and he found that the report 
came from the Associated Press, the same being 
signed ' Fredericks.' They also had a cablegram 
signed, ' Captain Duquesne,' and it said: * I am 
still alive.' The report also said that he was 
the sole survivor of an attack from the Indians 
and that he was somewhere In Bolivia recovering 
in a hospital, the location being unknown. He 
sent the message signed ' Fredericks ' himself from 
Buenos Aires. 

" He then became connected with the Board 
of Education of the Argentine, supplying films for 
the schools, and a certain politician in Buenos 
Aires claims he gave him $24,000 with which to 
purchase films (certain educational films). He 
claims to have come to New York with a man 
named Williamson and purchased the films, pay- 
ing $24,000 in cash." 

Mrs. Duquesne was already In New York, hav- 
ing a hard time collecting her claim against the 
German-owned Mannheim Insurance Company 
for the " sympathy verdict " for damage to the 



240 THROTTLED 

films. He stored the new films he claims to have 
purchased in the Fulton and Flatbush Warehouse, 
437 Carlton Avenue, Brooklyn — stored them 
as " statuary," and used to visit the warehouse 
frequently. On one occasion he arrived after 
hours, and tried unsuccessfully to bribe the watch- 
man to admit him. He moved to a small hotel in 
Elizabeth, New Jersey, and about two weeks after 
the storage of the cases of " statuary " in the 
Brooklyn warehouse, the warehouse mysteriously 
caught fire. 

By a queer coincidence the *' films " — Duquesne 
has never proved that he did buy them — which 
of course were destroyed in this fire too, had been 
insured by their purchaser, " Mr. Frederick 
Fredericks," for $33,000 by the Stuyvesant In- 
surance Company, and he set out to collect the 
$33,000 for the total loss of his property. If 
both claims proved successful, he and his wife 
would have gathered in some $ 1 13,000. But they 
found it one thing to be insured and another thing 
entirely to get the money. Times were not treat- 
ing Duquesne well. 

Along in July, 19 17, when the United States 
was in the throes of buckling down to the busi- 
ness of war, and Washington was sweltering un- 
der its increased load of war-time population and 



THE NATURE FAKER 241' 

business, Ashton, Duquesne's old friend, hap- 
pened to have business In the capital. He 
dropped In to call on Robert F. Broussard, of New 
Iberia, Louisiana, who In 19 15 had been elected 
senator from this state . . . the same Broussard 
who had been the author of the hippopotamus 
bill. Ashton asked the United States Senator 
from Louisiana If he had heard from Captain 
Duquesne. Ashton continues: "his secretary 
overheard the conversation (his secretary Is a 
charming young lady) and I took her out to din- 
ner, and about five days later she wrote me and 
said, ' You may be interested to know that Cap- 
tain Duquesne is in Washington, but does not 
want it known.' I immediately became Interested 
and concluded that if Captain Duquesne was In 
Washington and did not want it known, especially 
to me, I . . . would Investigate. So I went to 
Washington . . ." and learned something of 
Duquesne's whereabouts and circumstances. 

" After hearing this story In Washington," 
Ashton continues, " I learned that this man was 
in desperate need of assistance and I offered to 
help him in any way that I could. . . . Senator 
Broussard was trying to secure a position for him 
with General Goethals, . . . also at this time he 
had plans on file with the Secretary of the Navy, 



242 THROTTLED 

of an Invention to destroy mines In harbors, and 
was hoping that he might secure a position with 
the Navy Department. I had been offered a posi- 
tion with George Creel, and I also Introduced 
Duquesne to him, and I then got In touch with 
Major Kendall Barnelll. I advised him to listen 
to Duquesne and to give him a position. I also 
advised Barnelll that I was Investigating Du- 
quesne's story." 

Damon Ashton then brought Pythias Duquesne 
back to New York and put him up In the apart- 
ment In which the Bomb Squad men had first been 
called to Investigate the theft of papers. Du- 
quesne begged his friend not to make him known 
under his own name, as the Insurance case for the 
warehouse fire was still pending. So Duquesne 
continued to masquerade as " Fredericks." His 
health was poor, and he did not go to work at 
once. At times Ashton's charity seemed to Irk 
Duquesne, and he even went to the telephone and 
called up an agency to discuss a lecture tour. The 
lecture agents told him that only war lectures 
were making money. There was a real Inspira- 
tion, and after working for several days to as- 
semble a uniform of the West Australia Light 
Horse, correct In every detail, he dressed up In 
it and called at the lecture bureau as Captain 



THE NATURE FAKER 243 

Claude Staughton. His Australian experience as 
chaperone to the camels stood him In good stead, 
and he went about town mixing with British Army 
officers without arousing suspicion. He even got 
on famously with the late Sir George Reed, prime 
minister of Australia, whom he met one night at 
the Hotel Astor. 

The Pond lecture folk took him up and ar- 
ranged a tour for him. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, they swallowed Duquesne whole. They 
had him photographed in his new uniform, with 
the ribbons of three decorations over his heart, 
and they reproduced the natty figure on the cover 
of a publicity folder announcing the subjects on 
which Captain Claude Staughton was prepared to 
talk. " Captain Staughton," read the folder, 
** has perhaps seen more of the war than any man 
at present before the public. . . . He wears rib- 
bons showing that he has received five medals : two 
of these the King's and Queen's for service in the 
Boer war, carrying seven clasps; one is for service 
In Natal, and two for bravery in saving lives. A 
sixth French medal for which he has been cited 
is yet to be awarded. At the outbreak of the Boer 
war, Captain, then Lieutenant, Staughton, was an 
officer in one of Australia's crack horse regiments, 
the Mounted Rifles. He went with his regiment 



244 THROTTLED 

to Africa, and served In Cape Colony, Orange 
Free State, Transvaal, Natal and Basuto Land. 
He was with Kitchener at the Battle of Paarde- 
burg when General Cronje was captured; was 
with Lord Roberts at the Capture of Bloemfon- 
tein; at the fall of Johannesburg and the seizure 
of Pretoria. Later, In pursuit of DeWet's army, 
he was attached to General Knox's flying column 
as intelligence officer and commandeering officer 
for the Australian Bushmen. He later entered 
the Cape forces and took active part in the clear- 
ing up of Basuto Land, and In the last Natal insur- 
rection he fought with the Natal forces." 

That is a mere fragment of the fighting in which 
this eulogy proceeded to sketch Captain Staugh- 
ton's modest part. New Guinea, Galllpoll, 
Flanders, the Somme, Arras (illustrated by mo- 
tion pictures), four times gassed, three times bay- 
oneted, once pronged by a German trench-hook — 
those were the high lights of the career which, the 
folder assured the public, had finally brought him 
face to face with the most fearless lecture audience 
in the world — the United States. He would be 
pleased to lecture on the story of the Anzacs, 
underground warfare — or, on *' German Spy 
Methods," of which " he had learned much in 
Egypt." 



1 



THE NATURE FAKER 245 

One of the sub-topics in this lecture on German 
spy methods was this: " Germany pays nothing 
for its spying on us. — • We pay it all. — How long 
will we stand it? " 

Well, we stood it for a long time — too long 
a time by half. But not long enough to permit 
Captain Staughton to lecture before many audi- 
ences, nor to ask this question too frequently. He 
gulled a few suburban Sunday schools, but his ar- 
rest put an end at least to his attempt to pick up a 
bit of odd change by collecting Insurance. 

For the steamship Tennyson was British terri- 
tory, and, as this is written, the report comes that 
this picturesque charlatan Is going back across the 
Atlantic, to be tried for the murder of a British 
sailor. So begins the last chapter in the story of 
Fritz Duquesne. 



X 



THE PRUSSIAN, THE BOLSHEVIK, AND THE 
ANARCHIST 

We caught a glimpse, in the chapter describing 
the attempt to wreck St. Patrick's Cathedral, of 
the peace-time game of the anarchist group; we 
looked into their meeting places and their dis- 
orderly minds; and those of us y/ho are familiar 
with the localities which were their haunts in New 
York City will have been enabled to visualize with 
some clearness the squalid surroundings in which 
they worked. War gave them new opportuni- 
ties, and possibly a few high-lights which the Bomb 
Squad caught of the anarchist, I. W. W., and 
Russian activities since 19 14 may prove to be 
readable. If they are readable the author should 
be content, but he will not be unless he has put 
before his people something which may serve as a 
warning for the period of readjustment which 
the end of war has opened. 

An anarchist publication appeared in New York, 
dated November 15, 19 18, four days after Ger- 

246 



THE PRUSSIAN 247 

many had signed the armistice, with this legend 
on its front page, in large type : 

*' The War Is Dead: Long Live the Revolu- 
tion!'* 

It reflects the joyful frame of mind with which 
orthodox anarchists received the news of peace, 
and hailed the beginning of what they thought 
would be unrestrained guerilla warfare on law and 
class. They had done very little to help the war, 
and their two chief figures, Emma Goldman and 
Alexander Berkman, were in prison for obstruct- 
ing the draft of America's army. Yet the anarch- 
ists as a class were extremely happy. Let us re- 
view some of the reasons why. 

On October 25, 19 15, Har Dayal, who had 
fled at the outbreak of war to the protection of 
Berlin, where he was placed in charge of the In- 
dian Nationalist Committee, wrote from Amster- 
dam, Holland, to Alexander Berkman in New 
York. The letter follows: 

" Dear Comrade: 

" I am well and busy and sad. Can you send 
me some earnest and sincere comrades, men and 
women, who would like to help our Indian revolu- 
tionary movement in some way or other? I need 
the cooperation of very earnest comrades. Per- 
haps you can find them in New York or at Pater- 
3on. They should be real fighters, I. W. W.'s or 



248 THROTTLED 

anarchists. Our Indian party will make all neces- 
sary arrangements. 

" If some comrades wish to come, they should 
come to Holland. We have a centre in Amster- 
dam, and Dutch comrades are working with us. 
If some comrades are ready to come, please tele- 
graph me from New York to the following ad- 
dress : 

" * Israel Aaronson, c/o Madame Kercher, 
**'ii6 Oude Scheveningerweg, 
" ' Scheveningen, Holland.' 

" My assumed name Is * Israel Aaronson.' 
Kindly don't telegraph in your own name. The 
word ' yes ' will suffice. The Rotterdam-Amer- 
ika Line will receive instructions from us here to 
give tickets, etc., to as many persons as you recom- 
mend. All financial arrangements will be made 
by our party. 

*' News from India is good. We have lost ( ?) 
some very brave comrades in the recent skirmishes. 

" It would be better if you could intimate in 
your telegram how many comrades wish to come. 
For instance, put the number in some sentence. 
I shall understand, e. g., Five months' holiday 
coming. Etc., etc. 

** The need for the services of comrades is 
urgent. Please do come to our help. We are 
fighting against heavy odds. 

" With love and respect. 

"Your for the Fight, 

" Har Dayal." 



\ 




Lieutenant Commander Spencer Eddy 



THE PRUSSIAN 249 

" P. S. Kindly be very careful In keeping every- 
thing secret and confidential. When comrades 
arrive they should go and see Domela Nieuwen- 
huis, 20 Burgmestre Schooklaan, Hilversum (near 
Amsterdam). He will tell them where to meet 
me. Please also write a letter to the above ad- 
dress in Scheveningen, in addition to the telegram. 
Telegram may be intercepted. 

"H. D." 

Not satisfied apparently that this letter would 
reach Berkman, Har Dayal wrote another a week 
later, which read as follows: 

"Address: Israel Aaronson, 

" c/o Madame Kercher, 
"116 Oude Scheveningerweg, 

" Scheveningen. 
" Dear Comrade: 

*' I am well and busy. Can you send me some 
earnest and sincere comrades men and women, to 
help our Indian revolutionary party at this junc- 
ture? They should be persons of good character. 
If Tannenbaum is free, would he like to come? 

" Please keep this matter strictly secret and con- 
fidential. Kindly don't discuss it with too many 
people. 

" This Is a great opportunity for our party. I 
need the cooperation of earnest comrades for very 
Important work. Several of our comrades have 
come from India with encouraging news and mes- 
sages. 



250 THROTTLED 

" If some comrades can come, please wire znc 
write to the above address to my assumed na/nc, 
^ Israel Aaronson.' I shall send you money im- 
mediately to the name which you telegraph. Let 
it be a name beginning with a B. I shall under- 
stand. Please don't telegraph in your own name. 

" Kindly also word the telegram in such a way 
that I can understand how many comrades are 
coming. If five comrades wish to come, please 
wire: 

" * Five hundred dollars job vacant come.' 
Just put the number of comrades before the * hun- 
dred.' Or use any other device. 

** Kindly also send me names and addresses of 
the prominent anarchist comrades in Denmark, 
France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Ger- 
many, Austria, and other European countries. 
Please also send letters of introduction for me 
to them from Emma or yourself, if you know 
them." 

And so on. There is enough to show the com- 
pany the Hindu-German Intriguers kept, and to 
show that the Hindu committee in Berlin had 
enough money to buy mercenaries from the Ameri- 
can anarchist group, for which the American 
brokers would hardly go unrewarded. Rintelen, 
within a week of his arrival in the United States 
in May, 19 15, had tried to hire anarchists to blow 
up shipping and start strikes In munitions plants. 



THE PRUSSIAN 251 

i 

It further shows that during that week in October 
of 19 15, Har Dayal had a bright thought that if 
he could only get letters from Emma Goldman or 
Berkman introducing him to the anarchists of 
Europe, and could perhaps introduce to them in 
turn his lieutenant, Frank Tannenbaum, from 
America — the same who stormed St. Alphonsus' 
church with a gang of I. W. W.'s in 19 14, de- 
manding food — he could hoodwink the anarch- 
ists into believing that he was playing their game, 
and really make good use of them in playing his 
game — which of course was Berlin's. 

As it happened, Tannenbaum was busy. So 
was Emma. So was Berkman, who received the 
letter. He was just formulating plans to go to 
San Francisco and become an editor — not a new 
avocation, for he had for ten years helped Emma 
Goldman issue a publication known as " Mother 
Earth " — and to carry out certain radical and 
novel ideas. Before we sketch the way in which 
he put those ideas on paper, it may be well to see 
what experiences he had had to generate ideas, 
and just what promise his career contained that he 
would be of guiding benefit to these United States. 

Alexander Berkman was a Russian by birth, and 
was then about 44 years old. When he was 
a youth of 20 he became involved in the famous 



252 THROTTLED 

Homestead strike In Pennsylvania, and on July 22, 
1892, he burst into the office of Henry Frick, a 
steel manufacturer, in the Carnegie Building in 
Pittsburg and shot that gentleman in the neck. 
He then went to the Western Penitentiary and 
served fourteen years. This qualified him as a 
rare martyr among anarchists. After he got out 
of prison he was occasionally arrested in various 
cities, for wherever he appeared among advocates 
of violence there was pretty certain to be trouble. 1 
The long prison term had given him a chance to 
develop his mind, and he had written 512 pages 
on " The Prison Life of an Anarchist," which the 
*' Mother Earth Publishing Company " brought 
out, and which sold for $1.15 — a very Interest- 
ing book indeed. 

So he went to San Francisco in the fall of 19 15. 
A short time before he left New York his friend 
Bill Shatoff gave him a farewell dinner. As the 
evening wore on the diners adjourned to the 
neighborhood of Second Avenue and Fifth Street 
for a frolic, and Berkman and Shatoff playfully 
mauled a policeman, and took his club away, for 
which both men were arrested. But that did not 
interfere long with Berkman's departure for the 
Coast, and the purpose and fruit of his journey 
appeared within a short time. 




Major Fuller Potter, Military Intelligence 



THE PRUSSIAN 253 

It was called The Blast, According to Its own 
description The Blast was a revolutionary labor 
weekly, which meant that it preached revolution 
every so often to those who had a grievance 
against their employers and to those who had 
no employers but who had a deep contempt for 
anything of the sort. Alexander Berkman ap- 
peared as editor and publisher, E. B. Morton 
as associate editor, and M. E. Fitzgerald as man- 
ager. It sold for five cents a copy, unless you 
bought It In bundles, In which case you paid half 
that price. 

In the first Issue, dated January 15, 19 16, the 
title of the paper is explained by the editor. " Do 
you mean to destroy? " he asks. " Do you mean 
to build? These are the questions we have been 
asked from many quarters by inquirers sympa- 
thetic and otherwise. Our reply is frank and 
bold: We mean both: to destroy and to build. 
For socially speaking, Destruction Is the begin- 
ning of Construction. . . . The time Is NOW. 
The breath of discontent is heavy upon this wide 
land. It permeates mill and mine, field and fac- 
tory. Blind rebellion stalks upon highway and 
byway. To fire It with the spark of Hope, to kin- 
dle It with the light of Vision, and turn pale dis- 
content Into conscious social action — that Is the 



254 THROTTLED 

crying problem of the hour. It Is the great work 
calling to be done. To work, then, and blasted 
be every obstacle in the way of the Regenera- 
tion! '' In a congratulatory telegram in the same 
issue, Emma wrote to Alexander: "Let The 
Blast re-echo from coast to coast, inspiring 
strength and courage into the disinherited, and 
striking terror into the hearts of the craven enemy, 
now that one more of our brothers has fallen a 
victim to the insatiable Moloch. May The Blast 
tear up the solidified ignorance and cruelty of our 
social structure. Blast away ! To the daring be- 
longs the future." 

A sample of the methods by which The Blast 
proposed to begin its regeneration of the disin- 
herited is this delicate editorial paragraph: 

'' Judas Made Respectable. 

" Judas Iscariot delivered the Nazarene agita- 
tor into the hands of the Roman District At- 
torney. This base betrayal incensed the people 
against the mercenary stool-pigeon. Judas had 
enough decency to go and hang himself." 

A slap evidently at the person whom Emma re- 
ferred to in her telegram, who had just sold out to 
Moloch. 

It was a cardinal principle of the paper to be 



THE PRUSSIAN 255 

scurrilous and direct In Its attacks upon the enemies 
of anarchy. General Harrison Grey Otis, a Los 
Angeles publisher whose newspaper building was 
bombed in 19 12 after labor trouble, was referred 
to as " General Hungry Growl Otis," Colonel 
Roosevelt as " The Human Blowout." The 
leading cartoon of the second Issue, drawn — and 
well drawn — by Robert Minor, showed a huge 
figure of a laborer bearing on a tray the figure 
of a tiny though corpulent judge, its mouth open 
In speech, and Its chair guarded by three stolid 
elephantine policemen. The laborer is bearing 
the dish to a feast of anarchists, the title of 
Minor's contribution Is *' The Court Orders — ." 
The court had evidently ordered in the direction 
of The Blast, and Berkman did not like the order. 
In the same issue he wrote editorials against con- 
scription In England, against the convention of 
the American Federation of Labor which had just 
been held In San Francisco, against Its president, 
Samuel Gompers, and against national prepared- 
ness. 

I have quoted these extracts not because they 
are specially Interesting or readable, but because 
they will give one who is not wholly familiar with 
the practical platform of anarchy a suggestion of 



256 THROTTLED 

anarchy's tone of voice. It is not friendly, but is 
on the contrary quite snobbish. Selig Schulberg, 
in an article on Mexico, gently suggested : " Toil- 
ers of America, if the Hearsts, Otises and Rocke- 
fellers have property, for which they want protec- 
tion, in Mexico, let them protect it! " The editor 
says: "The Fords, the Bryans, the Jane Ad- 
dams may be sincere. If so they are blind lead- 
ers of the blind." A writer signing himself " L. 
E. Claypool," wrote, under the title " Prepared- 
ness is Hell," this tribute to our tortured Ally in 
Europe : " Most of you gents that yell (i. e., yell, 
* What about Belgium? ') never heard of Belgium 
till this war broke out. A lot of you probably 
don't know that the language of the Belgians is 
French. Further, you don't know that Belgium 
had a treaty with England and France which 
placed the little nation in the war before the Ger- 
man invasion. You may not know that French 
and English engineers and military experts had 
surveyed the land and were preparing to make it 
a battle ground long before the Germans did so." 
That statement was typical German propaganda 
of a very crude sort, calculated to appeal by its in- 
sinuation to the class of readers who affected The 
Blast, The platform of the paper, in a word, was 
Against. 



THE PRUSSIAN 257 

Berkman was in a rich field for labor unrest. 
California is a strong labor state. The whole 
country, outside as well as inside California, had 
been excited over the Los Angeles Times bomb 
affair in 19 12, and it revived that excitement 
when two of the culprits were prosecuted three 
years later. One finds constant reference to the 
case in the files of The Blast, and to the strikes 
at Lawrence, Mass., and Ludlow, Colorado, and 
Youngstown, Ohio. Anti-capitalistic rough-house 
in any corner of the continent was good copy for 
Berkman. If it flagged for a moment he took 
up the cudgels for his friend Emma, who had 
just been arrested in New York and sentenced to 
the workhouse for distributing birth-control litera- 
ture. Or he dove into international relations, 
comparing in one instance Villa and President Wil- 
son, with little mercy for the latter. The issue 
of April Fool's Day, 19 16, carried a leading edi- 
torial directed against the Pacific Coast Defense 
League, just organized to bring the national guard 
of the Pacific and Mountain states into a condi- 
tion of higher efficiency and to start a program 
of " healthy physical and military training '' in the 
public schools. This editorial was signed by Tom 
Mooney, who soon appeared in the columns of 
the paper in another capacity. 



258 THROTTLED 

The publication did not go unheeded by the 
Post Office department. On May i Berkman 
burst out with an article headed, " To Hell With 
The Government," in which he used language that 
would make any ordinary head of hair curl up. 
He was angry because the Government had Issued 
an order holding up all succeeding issues of the 
paper. In an editorial he said he welcomed the 
uprising in Ireland — the Easter Day affair in 
Dublin which cost several Sinn Feiners their lives. 
Other anarchistic publications in the country were 
meeting the same fate. The Alarm, in Chicago, 
Revolt of New York, Regeneracion, a Mexican 
revolutionary sheet issued in Los Angeles, and 
Foluntad, a Spanish paper In New York, were 
closed up. But Berkman went on publishing, and 
howling about the constitutional freedom of the 
press. Back In New York other friends of his 
had been making more trouble: Mrs. Max East- 
man and Bolton Hall were arrested for circulat- 
ing birth-control pamphlets, and Bouck White was 
jailed for distributing an effigy of the American 
flag bearing a dollar-mark. Berkman took up 
their cases and howled. He sent appeals for help 
in his fight against the Post Office department, and 
raised a little money. One of his liberal contribu- 
tors was a writer named John Reed, who sent him 



THE PRUSSIAN 259 

five dollars from New York. Then a strike broke 
out, fostered by the I. W. W., on the iron ranges 
in Northern Minnesota, and William M. Hay- 
wood wrote Berkman an appeal for help which 
the latter published in The Blast with a eulogy. 
He found no dearth of subjects to fill his pages, 
and then suddenly came an interruption. 

San Francisco turned out in a great prepared- 
ness parade on July 22. Someone threw a bomb 
Into the ranks of the marchers. Nine people were 
killed. The next issue of The Blast said sub- 
stantially: "Well, they might have expected 
it,'' and said actually: "To try to connect the 
Anarchists, the I. W. W., the Labor elements or 
the participants In the peace meeting with the 
bomb tragedy is stupid. The act was obviously 
the work of an individual who evidently sought 
to express his opposition to Preparedness for 
Slaughter by using the ammunition of Prepared- 
ness. Terrible as it Is, it is merely a foretaste 
in miniature of what the people may expect mul- 
tiplied a million times, from the Preparedness 
insanity." When two men, Nolan and Tom 
Mooney, were arrested and charged with the 
crime, The Blast rushed to their defense. When 
Warren Billings and Israel Weinberg were added 
to the list of accused, The Blast ran sketches of 



26o THROTTLED 

the defendants by Minor, the staff artist. The 
case was of consuming interest to the anarchist 
group, and they rubbed their hands, in The Blast 
office, over their good luck that it had happened 
right in their own Httle circle. The Blast ceased 
firing random shots and focussed on the bomb 
case in salvos, followed the course of the trials, 
drew a parallel between the condition of the San 
Francisco suspects and that of Fielden, Neebe and 
Schwab, tnree of the anarchists who were impli- 
cated in the Haymarket bomb outrage in Chicago 
in 1886 and pardoned. 

The business of being an anarchist became sur- 
rounded with more and more difficulty as the year 
drew toward a close. Caplan, the fourth Los 
Angeles bomb suspect to be tried, was convicted 
and sentenced to ten years; a group of laborers 
who had engaged in violence in strikes against the 
United States Steel Corporation were under sen- 
tence in a Pittsburg prison; Carlo Tresca (whom 
we recall as a speaker at the Brescia Circle in 
1915), and ten others were in jail in Duluth 
charged with murder in the L W. W. strike on the 
Mesaba Iron range; the Magon brothers, two 
Mexican revolutionary anarchists, were in prison, 
and the days of The Blast were numbered. Berk- 
man came back to New York in the fall. While 




Lieutenant A. R. Fish, Naval Intelligence 



THE PRUSSIAN 261 

he was absent, The Blast sputtered once more In its 
issue of January, 1917, with a venomous cartoon 
by Minor, and went out, for wan^ of funds. 

Berkman found Emma Goldman well and pros- 
perous. She had visited him in March in San 
Francisco, and again in June and July had de- 
livered two series of birth-control lectures there. 
After her first visit. The Blast had blossomed 
out with a book advertisement, which included the 
list of volumes sold by the Mother Earth Publish- 
ing Company in New York. There were the 
usual texts on anarchy, revolution, and syndicalism, 
and it is interesting to note among the books sent 
to Berkman for review the following titles : " A 
Few Facts About British Rule In India. Pub- 
lished by the Hindustani Gadar, San Francisco,'* 
" India's ' Loyalty ' to England. Published by 
The Indian Nationahst Party," and " The Meth- 
ods of the Indian Police in the Twentieth Century. 
Published by the Hindustan Gadar." Har Dayal 
had been the editor of Ghadr until 19 14; ap- 
parently his acquaintanceship with Berkman was 
being kept fresh by his successors at the nest of 
Hindu intrigue in Berkeley. 

But when Berkman got back to New York he 
found that birth-control was no longer the thing. 
A new development had taken place, half-way 



262 THROTTLED 

around the earth, and it looked promising for the 
anarchistic interests. So we must leave the two 
for a moment. 

On January 9, 19 17, the Russian premier re- 
signed. A fortnight later the newspapers an- 
nounced that the Germans had recaptured con- 
siderable important ground on the Riga front. 
On February 3, the United States severed diplo- 
matic relations with Germany, gave Bernstorfi his 
papers, and sent him home two weeks later. On 
March 1 1 a revolutionary demonstration broke 
out in Petrograd, and the next day the Czar of 
All the Russias abdicated his throne. A new 
cabinet was formed, its foreign minister told the 
Allies that Russia would continue to fight, and 
the United States recognized the new regime. 
The news was hailed with a good deal of fraternal 
spirit in America, and with special cordiality in 
New York, where there were great numbers of 
Russians who had left Europe to escape the per- 
secution of the old regime. 

Many of the New York Russians knew what 
was going to happen in Petrograd. The Bomb 
Squad made friends with an anarchist as early 
as February i, 19 17. On that day at a spot 
not far from where Shatoff and Berkman had 
attacked the policeman a year before, a certain 



THE PRUSSIAN 263 

Mr. Plotkin met a Mr. Bogdanovitch. Plot- 
kin urged Bogdanovitch to call a special confer- 
ence of all the revolutionary organizations in the 
city to protest against militarism. " No," said 
the conservative Bogdanovitch. '' Our group will 
either have to pass a resolution as a single unit, or 
else go over to Group 2 and see what they are 
doing about this news that we are going to have 
war. Don't be too ready to jump to conclusions." 
So the two went to call on Group 2, which was in 
session — some 50 Russians and Russian Jews, 
who spent the evening harmlessly reading the war 
prospects from American newspapers. No reso- 
lution was passed. 

The next night, however, there was a lecture at 
Beethoven Hall, at 210 East 5th Street. The 
speaker was introduced as *' Mr. Bornstein," who 
had just returned from Russia. " Mr. Bom- 
stein " was Leon Trotzky. 

Trotzky, using the Russian language, told of 
the plans that were being developed for revolution. 
*' You anarchists here," he said, " don't want any 
militarism or any government which is of no help 
to the working class, and is always ready to fire 
on the workman. It's time you did away with 
such a government once and forever ! " After his 
speech, the chairman, Comrade G. Chudnofsky, 



264 THROTTLED 

rose and addressed the crowd of 300 in the hall, 
to this effect: 

" Comrades, some of you can't read English. 
You don't know what is going on until you see it 
in the Russian papers. Only to-day I noticed that 
the Police Commissioner is going to call out all the 
reserves he can get to handle the situation, since 
Germany notified America what she would do. 
The capitalistic government is afraid of us! 
They are afraid of the working class. Remember 
that, for in case of war, we can protest against 
militarism and start our own war. Here is a 
resolution which I propose to prevent any of our 
loyal number joining the army. I will read it." 
And he read it. 

The next day Bill Shatoff was scheduled to 
speak at a meeting at Number 9 Second Avenue, 
but he was suddenly called to Boston, and a sub- 
stitute took the platform. He was howled down 
because he made a speech which reflected loyalty 
to the United States. The audience consisted of 
75 Russians, of whom some 30 were anarchists 
known to the Bomb Squad. The United States 
severed diplomatic relations with Germany that 
night. 

On February 4 the representatives of several 
of the Russian anarchist groups were to meet at 



THE PRUSSIAN 265 

534 East 5th Street and pass the resolution against 
militarism, but they could not agree upon it, and 
the session ended by postponing the matter. 
Most of the delegates present adjourned to 64 
East 7th Street (almost within earshot of the 
Washington Arch), to hear Chudnofsky rave 
against enlistment, the police, the government and 
the war. 

Those little meetings were typical of the erup- 
tions which occurred throughout the poorer dis- 
tricts of the great city during the remainder of 
the month of February. Such propagandists as 
Chudnofsky and Trotzky, uttering their exhorta- 
tions to a multiplication of such groups as gath- 
ered In the Fifth Street house, spread among the 
gossipy East SIders and into the remotest slums 
the news that great things were about to happen 
in Russia, and rumor and expectancy set the stage 
for the arrival of the news of the revolution on 
March 12. The leaders then began to mobilize 
their forces and act quickly. Under Shatoff, 
Schnabel and Rodes the revolutionary fire was 
passed along from one to another. The story 
was that Russia was free, reclaimed from Czar- 
dom and all that it had meant of oppression. 

The lid was off, and it was a case of first come, 
first served. The Provisional Government was 



266 fTHROTTLED 

no better than any other, these men said. " Rus- 
sia shall be ours." "How?" asked the eager'; 
disciples. " By helping yourselves," answered 1 
Shatoff and Schnabel and Rodes. " That's all 
very well," said the proletariat, " but we haven't 
the price." " Oh, in that case, come to the fare- 
well meeting on March 26 for Leon Trotzky, at 
Harlem River Casino, and all will be made clear 
to you." 

Some 800 people were at Trotzky' s farewell 
party, which was held under the auspices of the 
German Socialist Federation. Alexander Berk- 
man and Emma Goldman were among those pres- 
ent. A blond Russian made a speech in which he 
said: " Comrades, some of us are going back to 
Russia to push the revolution as we think it ought 
to be pushed, and those who remain here must get 
ready to do their share of the work as it ought to 
be done." Trotzky then rose and speaking first 
in German, then in Russian, repeated the advice 
the previous speaker had given, and added: 
" You who stay here must work hand in hand with 
the revolution in Russia, for only in that way 
can you accomplish revolution in the United 
States." He was cheered to the echo. 

(There are still those who wonder why we have 
not recognized the Bolsheviki.) 



THE PRUSSIAN 267 

The pier of the Norwegian-American line the 
next morning was a strange sight. Trotzky, with 
his wife, Chudnofsky, Plotkin, and a group of 
fifty more Russians, Including such names as Mu- 
hln, Rapaport, Dnieprofsky, Yaroshefsky and 
Rashkofsky, sailed for Norway. An undersized, 
wild-eyed, fanatic little plucked-bantam of a Rus- 
sian expatriate literally set out from Hoboken 
to upset the Provisional Government of Russia, 
prevent the formation of a republic, stop the war 
with Germany and prevent interference from 
other governments — that was his open boast. 
And, If such a mission can be crowned with suc- 
cess, he succeeded. 

The leaders of the groups left behind began 
that very afternoon to examine recruits for the 
return to Russia. They met at 534 East 5th 
Street and elected a committee of five to serve as 
examining board for applicants for the $20 to 
$50 free passage money extended by the Provi- 
sional Government to help Russians who had fled 
the persecutions of the old days to repatriate them- 
selves. It Is unnecessary to state that the Provi- 
sional Government hardly knew how thoroughly 
these homing pigeons were going to re-establish 
themselves. All those who passed muster w^ere 
put down for a sailing date. 



268: THROTTLED 

The Norwegian ship bearing Trotzky and his 
party put into Halifax and the British detained 
the entire passenger list. On April 15 a mass 
meeting of anarchists, socialists, and Industrial 
Workers of the World was held at Manhattan 
Lyceum to make a formal protest to the Brit- 
ish government against their detention. Ker- 
ensky asked for their release, and they were al- 
lowed to go on. By this time a second consign- 
ment had left, hut by a different route. On April 
3 George Brewer, H. Gurin, Mr. and Mrs. David 
Rohlis, one Kotz, one Schmidt, one Nemiroff and 
27 others left the Pennsylvania Station for Chi- 
cago, Vancouver, Japan and Siberia. On April 
23 Comrades Bogdanovitch, Bendetsky, Albert 
Greenfield, John (or Ivan) Stepanoff, Michael 
Smirnoff, Henry Shklar and 89 more left on the 
Erie Railroad for Seattle, Japan and Siberia. On 
the 1 2th day of May, " Dynamite Louise '' Berg, 
sister of the anarchist who was killed July 4, 
19 14, by the accidental explosion of a bomb, 
boarded the steamship United States of the Scan- 
dinavian-American Line In Hoboken for Chris- 
tlanla and Russia. On that ship sailed nearly 
a hundred others of the anarchist and revolu- 
tionary element. Ninety more. Including Soko- 
loff, a prominent I. W. W., left for San Francisco 




Captain John B. Trevor, Military Intelligence 



THE PRUSSIAN 269 

and Japan two days later. On May 26 Mrs. Bill 
Shatoff, with Alexander Broide, J. Wishniefsky, 
and 18 more members of the Cooperative An- 
archist Organization sailed from Hoboken on 
the Oskar IL Two days passed and Meyer Bell, 
an anarchist who had seen the inside of many an 
American jail for revolutionary agitation, and 
Mrs. Meyer Bell, with no others took their de- 
parture for San Francisco and the Orient. The 
last consignment but one, a group of 90 more po- 
tential Bolsheviki, followed them on June 24. 

Shatoff and Wolin waited until their flock had 
been herded out of the country, and then vanished 
themselves. No one knew their route, but they 
were heard from in Seattle. Altogether some 
600 anarchists made the pilgrimage. Some never 
reached Russia. Others who did get back found 
that conditions offered slim picking, and the Chi- 
nese and Manchurian ports are sprinkled with 
them to-day — men without a country, who cannot 
live in Russia, and who may not return to the 
United States. 

Those who did get through to the capital of 
Russia straightway joined the organization. 
Trotzky had found Lenine there with plans al- 
ready well advanced. The Provisional Govern- 
ment superficially was adequate to handle the sit- 



270 THROTTLED 

uation, and during June It gave some slight promise 
of being able to prosecute Its share of the war, but 
a breach was coming. A Council of Workmen 
and Soldiers had sprung up to oppose the Duma 
and the government when the Duma voted for] 
an Immediate offensive in Gallcia, the Council 
voted for a separate peace. Kerensky swung him- 
self back Into balance for a month, and led a 
military offensive. It turned Into a retreat, the 
retreat Into a rout. Kornlloff took command of 
the army on August 2, and the following day the 
military governor of Petrograd was assassinated. 
The deposed Czar was taken to Siberia. On 
September 2 Kerensky tried the expedient of ar- 
rest against his rising enemies In Moscow. On 
September 16 he proclaimed a new republic, but 
political structures could not keep out the terrify- 
ing German military advance that already was 
threatening Petrograd nor the German propa- 
ganda which was already there. Mid-October 
saw the government in flight to Moscow. On the 
2 1 St of October Leon Trotzky, at the head of 
the Bolshevlkl In the Council, declared his party 
for an Immediate democratic peace, and left the 
hall at their head, cheering. Municipal elections 
on November i rejected the Bolshevlkl, but they 
would not be rejected, and on November 7 the 



I 



THE PRUSSIAN 271 

Maximalists deposed Kerensky and took posses- 
sion of the Government. Lenine became premier, 
Trotzky minister of foreign aliairs. 

The New York delegation won influential posi- 
tions under the new regime. A United States 
senator has described the current Russian govern- 
ment as nothing but '' Lenine and a gang of anarch- 
ists from New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.'' 
Wolin took charge of a branch of the press — a 
sort of commissioner of public misinformation. 
Shatoff, in America a humble syndicalist and 
I. W. W., rose to the eminence of chairman of 
the " Extraordinary Commission for the Strug- 
gle Against Speculators and the Counter Revolu- 
tion " in Petrograd, a commission whose activi- 
ties are perhaps better described by its common 
title in the capital. It Is called the " Blood and 
Murder " or the " To the Wall " committee. He 
has filled in his spare time as Commissioner of 
Railroads, and has been commonly credited in 
Petrograd with the murder of the Czar and his 
family. Ouritzky, Shatoff's predecessor at the 
head of the Committee, had amassed a fortune 
of some four million roubles during his tenure 
of office. He died a violent death. Shatoff, in 
October of 191 8, had not followed suit. The 
same John Reed who contributed to the support 



272 THROTTLED 

of the Blast appeared in Petrograd as a sympa- 
thetic correspondent, and was made consul to 
New York — a portfolio which he was unable 
to use when he returned to New York because 
of his indictment, along with Max Eastman and 
several other editors of a paper known as The 
Masses, for attempting to obstruct the draft. 
The balance of the New York anarchists who 
made up the expeditionary force of 19 17 found 
their way, such of them as escaped the rigors 
of Petrograd life, into positions of influence in 
the government of one hundred or more mil- 
lions of Russian people. To be sure, their hold 
is not too secure, but they are enjoying for the 
moment a sense of power which is intoxicating. 
Nothing seems to please a Bolshevik of the New 
York City group more than power — the same 
thing he tried to overthrow. I suppose it makes 
a difference whose power it happens to be. 

Neither Goldman nor Berkman returned to 
Russia. Their publishing and bookselling busi- 
ness kept them here, and both were always in de- 
mand as lecturers. Both had pictured themselves 
for many years as the champions of anarchy in 
the United States, and it is conceivable that they 
did not wish to pass over their sceptres to any less 
well qualified successors. Unlike the ringleaders 



THE PRUSSIAN 273 

of the L W. W., these anarchists did not dodge 
real work. Both had active minds, and were hap- 
piest when they were busy. Berkman's writing 
at times shows a certain cheerful tenderness under- 
neath its bombast, and Emma Goldman had a 
rather good-natured sarcasm at times as a speaker. 

The two cast their lot in with the pacifists, the 
anti-conscriptionists, and the factions whose chief 
aim was to interfere with America's going to war. 
Emma began to lecture on the subject. On the 
night of May 18 she spoke to a meeting in the 
Harlem River Casino. After a preamble ad- 
vising the audience that government agents were 
present and that violence would be out of order, 
she drew what she probably considered a logical 
conclusion from this advice and shouted: 

" And so, friends, we don't care what people 
will say about us. We only care for one thing, 
and that is to demonstrate to-night, and to demon- 
strate as long as we can be able to speak, that 
when America went to war ostensibly to fight for 
democracy, it was a dastardly lie. It never v/ent 
to war for democracy! ... It is not a war of 
economic independence, it is a war for conquest. 
It is a war for military power. It is a war for 
money. It is a war for the purpose of trampling 
underfoot every vestige of liberty that you people 



274 THROTTLED 

have worked for, for the last forty or thirty or 
twenty-five years, and therefore we refuse to sup- 
port such a war. . . . 

" We beheve in violence and we will use vio- 
lence. . . . How many people are going to refuse 
to conscript? I say there are enough. I could 
count fifty thousand, and there will be more. . . . 
They will not register! What are you going to 
do if there are 500,000? It will not be such an 
easy job, and it will compel the government to 
sit up and take notice, and therefore we are going 
to support, with all the money and publicity at our 
hands, all the men who will refuse to register and 
who will refuse to fight. 

" I hope this meeting is not going to be the last. 
As a matter of fact we are planning something 
else. . . . We will have a demonstration of all 
the people who will not be conscripted, and who 
will not register. We are going to have the larg- 
est demonstration this city has ever seen, and no 
power on earth will stop us. . . . If there is any 
man in this hall that despairs, let him look across 
at Russia . . . and see the wonderful thing that 
revolution has done. . . . 

" What is your answer? Your answer to war 
must be a general strike, and then the governing 
class will have something on its hands. . . ." 



THE PRUSSIAN 275 

She wound up her speech with an appeal for 
funds, and said that her paper, Mother Earth, 
was going to support the rebellion against the 
draft law which had been signed by the president 
that very day. Mother Earth spoke, in her next 
issue, which appeared shortly before registration 
day, June 5, and spoke in fairly disapproving 
terms toward conscription. But the sun went 
down into New Jersey on registration day with- 
out having witnessed the greatest demonstration 
New York City ever saw, or any demonstration 
whatever save the quiet, cheerful enrollment of 
what later became a heroic national army. 

On June 15 Emma Goldman and Alexander 
Berkman were arrested in the office of Mother 
Earth at 20 East 125th Street. On June 27 they 
were arraigned for trial. On July 9 the jury 
pronounced them guilty of having attempted to 
obstruct the draft. Judge Mayer thereupon sen- 
tenced Berkman to two years in the Federal peni- 
tentiary at Atlanta, Goldman to the state peniten- 
tiary at Jefferson City, Missouri for two years, 
and fined each of them $10,000. It was a stiff 
blow to organized anarchy — the maximum sen- 
tence possible, and the judge followed it by direct- 
ing the District Attorney, Harold A. Content, to 
notify the Commissioner of Labor of the convic- 



276 THROTTLED 

tlon, in order that when the two emerged from 
prison, they might be deported as aliens convicted 
of two or more crimes to the country from which 
they came, bringing upHft to down-trodden Amer- 
ica. 

Their work has since been carried on in a more 
or less desultory way. They, too, have become 
official martyrs to the cause, whose names will be 
inscribed along with those of Brescia, the Hay- 
market murderers, and a score of others, on the 
anarchist service flag. The undercurrent of op- 
position appeared spasmodically during the war 
and it became necessary for an Alabama Judge, sit- 
ting in the District Court of New York, on Oc- 
tober 25, 19 1 8, to impose maximum sentences 
under the espionage act upon three more ad- 
vocates of unrest, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lip- 
man and Hyman Lachnowsky, the ringleaders of 
a group who circulated leaflets denouncing armed 
intervention in Russia and advocating a general 
strike. They were sentenced to twenty years 
apiece; a fourth member got three years and a 
$1,000 fine. A woman in the group, Mollie 
Steiner, was sentenced to fifteen years. 

The efforts at " demonstration " which the im- 
ported anarchists in America have employed are 
neither as picturesque nor as popularly received 



THE PRUSSIAN 277 

as those of their comrades in the old world. 
Anarchy is out of tune in America. Prussianism 
has already had its answer from the United 
States. Bolshevism is not for a well-educated, 
deep-breathing nation like ours. And anarchy, 
the poorest wretch of the three, must make terri- 
fying faces through some other window than that 
of a country full of people who are going to con- 
tinue to make this democracy safe for itself. 



THE END 



I?D-2 74J 




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